Story at a glance
- French President Emmanuel Macron is offering relief to children who have endured mental health issues as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
- Macron announced the initiative after meeting with medical professionals and families at a psychiatric facility, saying pandemic lockdown measures, including school closings, have been “very traumatic for young people.”
- The French health ministry said Monday that nearly 6,000 people were in intensive care units due to complications from COVID-19.
French President Emmanuel Macron is offering relief to children who have endured mental health issues as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Macron said April 14 that children from ages 3 to 17 could qualify for 10 free counseling sessions with a doctor’s prescription, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The plan will last through the remainder of the pandemic.
Macron announced the initiative after meeting with medical professionals and families at a psychiatric facility, saying pandemic lockdown measures, including school closings, have been “very traumatic for young people.”
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The French health ministry said Monday that nearly 6,000 people were in intensive care units due to complications from COVID-19, Reuters reported. Additionally, France documented 449 deaths, bringing the total to more than 100,000.
Mental health has been a global concern throughout the pandemic. Data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as the Office for National Statistics in the U.K., show a marked increase in the number of adults who reported feeling symptoms of depression, according to Nature.
Rates of depression in the U.S. jumped from 11 percent between January and June 2020 to 42 percent in December 2020. Meanwhile, in the U.K. data shows a 9 percent increase between March and June 2020.
Kathleen Merikangas, an epidemiologist at the U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health, told Nature that the pandemic offers the perfect chance to see the lasting effects of public policy on mental health.
“We have a real opportunity, a natural experiment, in how policies in different countries impact people’s mental health,” Merikangas said.
France is currently in the middle of its third full-scale lockdown, which Macron announced at the end of March. The lockdown shifted schools to remote learning and closed non-essential businesses.
French health minister Olivier Veran told the local paper Le Telegramme in an interview published Tuesday that the country could see an easing of lockdown restrictions on a case-by-case basis, according to Reuters. Macron is considering easing the country’s lockdown in May if there’s an improvement.
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