A little over a month ago, state and private schools in the state of São Paulo started to receive 100% of their students, with no student rotation and without a distance of one meter between desks.
Although school activities seek to return to normality, the students who arrive at schools are now different from those who went home at the beginning of the pandemic.
Most of the state education networks resumed face-to-face activities. In addition to São Paulo, other states authorized the return of 100% of students to classrooms, such as Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Piauí, Amazonas and Mato Grosso.
Some teaching units and even entire municipalities have, however, suspended activities after detecting cases of Covid-19 among students.
But another health problem is also a concern. According to a survey by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), it is estimated that, worldwide, one in seven individuals aged between 10 and 19 years old live with a diagnosed mental disorder.
In Brazil, a survey carried out by the Ipec Technology Institute at the request of Pfizer showed that young people were the most affected by mental problems during the pandemic.
Silmara Meireles, a psychologist and member of the Association for the Emotional Health of Children (Asec Brasil/Movimento Saber Lidar), observes that many children and adolescents emotionally felt the restrictions of contact to the point of having their mental health compromised.
“Children and young people suffered a lot from the impact of the pandemic due to social isolation, as they were not in school”, he analyzes.
The psychologist also cites the growth in the number of students with anxiety and depression disorders.
A study carried out at the end of 2020 by researchers at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) found that students in the 9th grade of elementary and high school in state and municipal public schools in the suburbs of São Paulo and Guarulhos were diagnosed with depression (10, 5%) and anxiety (47.5%).
There are several factors that can generate these conditions in children and adolescents, such as remote classes, lack of interaction with people of the same age group, living with stressed adults at home — or in home office or putting yourself at risk to work.
“We have several scenarios that impacted this period of isolation, and these emotional impacts have effects that will show up now [presencialmente] in the school environment”, says Silmara Meireles.
Committed interpersonal skills
The deprivation of interpersonal relationships affected not only the mental health of young people, but also their related skills, such as respect, empathy and trust. This is what points out Celso Lopes, psychiatrist and founder of Programa Semente, of solutions in socio-emotional education.
“They [as competências] were impacted for a very simple reason: teenagers were deprived of interpersonal relationships. That means they’re a little childish. That is, what would be charged for having 15 [anos] he can’t do it because he didn’t have two years of apprenticeship”, he comments.
Other socialization attributes that may have been harmed are knowing how to approach to introduce yourself to someone you don’t know, being assertive, taking a stand, noticing positive emotions and being enthusiastic.
Even so, Lopes emphasizes that this learning can be recovered, as well as the curricular contents, as long as there is a direction for this.
Even though students are eager for social interaction, it generates many uncertainties that can cause anxiety.
“If you are less developed to face social environments, when this confrontation happens, because it has to happen, it creates uncertainty. And how do we perceive this uncertainty? Through the family’s feelings of fear, such as worry, anxiety”, says Lopes.
Face-to-face feedback in practice
Fábio de Lima, a philosophy professor at the Professor Joaquim Luiz de Brito State School, in the north of São Paulo, reports that the students returned to classroom classes missing the interaction with colleagues and professors. Even so, the worsening of mental health was brought about by the students.
“Students said that they were even going to school precisely to try to resolve this situation and have contact with people, because they were feeling very depressed and also feeling anxiety,” says the teacher.
A 16-year-old student from the 1st year of high school even shared that she was suffering from panic attacks as a result of the pandemic, but that her family did not understand her and had not sought professional help.
The teacher began working on meditation in 2012 with 3rd grade high school students by approaching philosophers who used to practice it. Over the years, the activity was expanded to other series until it became a weekly project.
The initial idea was to promote focus and attention to the entrance exams, but the school realized that the practice also helped in other aspects, such as combating violence. “With meditation, a person becomes more peaceful, he thinks more about what he says, he becomes less impulsive”, says the professor.
As a result of the pandemic, the project was stopped. With the return to face-to-face classes, in addition to working on students’ concentration and memory, meditative moments also serve as a space for discussion of mental health.
“My first issue with them [os alunos] in the classroom was adaptation. From the moment we are adapting, we see what needs to be worked on, and the students’ mental health has been shaken”, points out Lima.
Mental health issues do not only appear among older children and adolescents. Teacher Maristela Iuliano Meira teaches children from five to six years old at the Saci Pererê Municipal Children’s School, in Taboão da Serra (Greater São Paulo), and says that the students returned anxious and agitated.
“With confinement, parents lost patience with their children. They screamed a lot, gave cell phones to keep them quiet and not ‘disturb’ their work at home, became unemployed and ended up ‘taking out’ their frustrations on the little ones”, he says.
About to start Elementary School, children have shown difficulties to relate among peers. “Since they lived with adults for a long time, they are afraid and afraid of getting close to other children”, says Maristela.
When a teacher notices something different in the child’s behavior, the orientation is to talk with those responsible to understand if the difficulty in socialization is normal or if it is an atypical behavior.
In addition, to support the families in this recovery, the school carried out a work of orientation to those responsible with recommendations for feedback and awareness of the importance of learning in early childhood.
How to deal with feelings and emotions
Lopes explains that it is very important to understand that having feelings is not the same as having an illness, but our way of perceiving and processing emotions can get sick.
“Feelings are part of our instruments of perception of what is happening around us. If there’s uncertainty, we’re going to have an anxious pattern. If there were losses, let’s have the pattern of sadness. If there was injustice, we will have anger patterns”, exemplifies the psychiatrist.
In these cases, what happens is the feeling is read as a disease that needs to be escaped. “We need to name and realize that she [a ansiedade] it’s just that much of what ails me isn’t happening, but that’s what I imagine and, based on that, things tend to return to normalcy”, says Lopes.
Still, some people will find it more difficult to process feelings, even in a more cooperative setting.
“The stressor of this difficulty ends up waking up genes that predispose to diseases such as depression and anxiety, and it can open up a situation that requires professional treatment.”
Need for reception and dialogue
Silmara Meireles reinforces the importance of not naturalizing the emotional impact of the pandemic on children and adolescents. This means that a disruptive behavior may not be just a phase.
“Sometimes, children become more aggressive and we only understand this as a disobedient behavior, when it can also show the triggering of a disorder”, says the psychologist.
For her, it is important that both mothers, fathers and guardians, as well as schools, open spaces for dialogue with students to welcome and support them in this return, much awaited by them, but with many restrictions, insecurities and losses.
“Everyone who is in this school environment will need to be more careful with each other, more generous in relationships and more patient”, he emphasizes.
Surveys carried out with young people and teenagers on social networks by U-Report Brasil, an interaction program also run by UNICEF, found that 72% felt the need to ask for help with their mental health during the pandemic, but 41% did not turn to anyone.
Actions to support schools in São Paulo
Chief of staff at the São Paulo State Department of Education, Henrique Pimentel says that the mental health of students, teachers and servers is a concern of the ministry since the return to face-to-face activities and important for the resumption.
The department developed the Conviva SP program, which, among other actions, offers emotional support to students, teachers and servers. It also launched the Psychologists in Education program, which makes psychology professionals available to educational institutions in the state network.
“The school organizes what is the best model of care, whether it is individualized care, whether it is a roundtable discussion about something that happened that is affecting the routine of that class, and the psychologist makes a video call with that class through its own platform ”, says Pimentel.
Reference: CNN Brasil
