Last year, the Konsulta'm service of the Barcelona City Council to offer psychological support to young people between 12 and 22 years old and their families, and thus improve the early detection of mental health problems, attended 734 consultations starring 448 different young people, from among which 58% were women.
By age, 18% were between 12 and 14 years old, 40% between 15 and 17 years old and the remaining 42% were over 18 years old.
For reasons of consultation, the 44% who came for psychological or emotional distress stand out, followed by 29% who did so due to difficulties in their relationships.
After the outbreak of the health crisis, care grew by around 138% during the last year.
Specifically, it has gone from serving 199 people and making 308 queries in 2019 to serving 448 people and making 734 queries in 2020. During 2019, 30.3% of women and 22.7% of men reported having emotional distress, a situation that has shown an increasing trend in recent years.
For this reason, the pandemic caused the service to maintain telematic attention to users in addition to 147 inquiries made by 101 entities or organizations.
However, the City Council considers that with the appearance of the health crisis, the successive confinements and measures of social isolation, the mental health indicators in young people have worsened, since there is an even greater increase in this symptomatology compatible with depression and emotional distress.
The latest questionnaire from the Center for Sociological Studies (CIS) concludes that 6 out of 10 respondents have had symptoms such as depression or anxiety, to varying degrees, a situation that has particularly affected youth and women.
In fact, the same Barcelona Youth Survey 2020 has already concluded that 60% of young people consider that Covid-19 will affect them negatively, while the care data from the Medical Emergency System (SEM) also collects that Attention for anxiety disorder reasons throughout Catalonia has increased significantly between 2019 and 2020, going from 1,242 to 4,969.
Given this situation and the certainty that Covid-19 is aggravating mental health problems, the Barcelona City Council already launched a Mental Health Shock Plan last May, endowed with 1.5 million euros.
In this way, new services were launched, such as the suicide prevention telephone line or emotional support groups and grief support groups for people who have lost a loved one during the pandemic.
The Consistory wants to address the current mental health crisis not only from the outset, but also in the medium and long term and to take into account how citizens feel.
Within this plan, agreed with the group of entities and services that make up the city's Mental Health Board, the City Council has deployed the Konsulta'm network throughout the city and there are now 11 service points distributed throughout all districts.
The service also offers advice to family members, professionals, as well as entities and organizations that work with these age groups.
The aim is to offer a specialized, agile and immediate response, without the need for a referral or prior appointment, in order to address the suffering and feelings of discomfort of youth as soon as possible and thus prevent the different problems from worsening or becoming chronic. .
It is for this reason that the Konsulta'm opens one afternoon a week in spaces of reference and daily access that already carry out youth activities.
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