Surveys and practice show that a growing number of children and youth are "not well" and the pandemic and earthquakes "have stolen their carefree growing up," Croatian state agency Hina reported on Tuesday, citing Ombudswoman Helenca Pirnat-Dragicevic who took part in a debate on the children's mental health in a pandemic.

“The epidemic and earthquakes have stolen carefree growing up for a large number of children and youth. They have also impacted basic needs such as the safety of one’s home, associating with one’s peers, playing outdoors, going to school, hugging one’s grandparents,” Children’s Ombudsman Pirnat-Dragicevic said at a joint meeting of the parliamentary committees on education, science and culture, and the family, youth and sports.

“Even before the epidemic about one-third of young people in Croatia had serious anxiety symptoms and 20 percent showed signs of depression and stress,” she warned and, as Hina reported, “underscored the need for serious care for the mental health of children during crises.”

Ensure professional protection for children’s mental health

According to Hina, Pirnat-Dragicevic “stressed” that it was necessary to ensure a sufficient number of professionals in order to protect children’s mental health, as well as providing access to psychological help, notably in small communities, and increasing mental health literacy among staff in the education sector.

Psychology professor Natasa Jokic-Begic of the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences presented the results of a survey conducted in December 2020 on a sample of 1,400 children and 2,650 parents.

About 65 percent of children assessed that their lives were worse off than before the pandemic while 28 percent of elementary school students and more than 38 percent of secondary school students said they had serious problems with insomnia. About 37 percent of girls and 22 percent of boys had clinically significant symptoms, she added.

Criminal acts against children increase 30 percent

The director of the Zagreb Child and Youth Protection Centre, Gordana Buljan-Flander, said that over the past year there had been an increase of close to 30 percent in the number of criminal acts against children – abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence.

Katarina Dodig-Curkovic, the head of the children’s psychiatry ward of the KBC Osijek Hospital, said that diagnoses were drastically changing, mentioning in that context autoaggression, self-injury, behavioural problems, aggression against property, increased eating disorders, addiction to influencers, youtubers and the like.