Clinic director Christine Freitag: "We are seeing more and more social fears among young people"

A new psychological outpatient clinic at the university clinic aims to help parents and children in an uncomplicated manner.

Christine Freitag, Director of the Clinic for Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents, sees a special need for teenagers in pandemic times.

Monika Ganster

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Ms. Freitag, who do you want to help with your new offer?

Especially parents and adolescents who do not know whether behavior is still normal or already psychologically abnormal and who are therefore worried.

Our offer is currently aimed at young people from the age of 12.

If it is well established, we want to offer the outpatient clinic to primary school children as well.

Do teenagers have more problems?

In the case of anorexia, in particular, anorexia, treatment should be started as early as possible in order to avert a chronic course.

Anxiety disorders and depressive episodes often first appear at the beginning of puberty.

What types of eating disorders do you see?

On the one hand, there is weight gain because children sit in front of the computer and move less.

This is going to be a big problem in the long run.

On the other hand, we are also seeing an increase in cases of anorexia, which is still one of the worst diseases in adolescence.

Because if left untreated, it can be life-threatening.

Children with anxiety disorders also come to your clinic.

Is that the fear of corona or something else?

No, that goes beyond Corona.

There is fear of the future, in the sense of generalized fears.

These children fear many different things and fear that something might happen to important people around them.

On the other hand, we are also seeing increased social fears because the young people sat at home a lot and no longer had the usual contact with their peers and teachers.

Those who are predisposed to social fears became even more socially fearful during Corona and the isolation measures.

How can you help in such cases in the ambulance?

We can tell the young people and parents in which direction we are headed.

Are these relatively normal fears or is there more?

We are good at differentiating something like that.

Experienced employees work in the outpatient department who know the clinical pictures well and who can provide a classification in half an hour's consultation.

In addition, we want to provide parents with objective information on the respective clinical picture.

In some cases you can do relatively simple things that are pretty helpful.

In the case of insomnia, for example, adolescents can observe a regular day-night rhythm and try not to use electronic devices before falling asleep.

What if the simple methods are not enough?

Then we advise where the families can turn if further clarification is necessary.

We present various forms of therapy and pass on address lists.

In the next year we want to offer short-term therapies in-house.

But we have to develop and build this offer first.

How did the ambulance come about?

Michael Henning from the Kinderhilfestiftung approached us with the idea.

The foundation would like to support exactly where there is too little supply.

In this case, fast, targeted care.

We do not want to build up competition with established child and adolescent psychiatrists or psychotherapists for adolescents.

But especially in these areas it can take up to three months to get a treatment place.

We wanted to make an offer available more quickly in order to provide targeted advice at an early stage and thus prevent chronic processes.

Do you also want to provide scientific support for your work?

Yes absolutely.

We want to see what effect it has if you can offer something to patients early on and in a very targeted manner.

After a year we would also like to know who the family turned to after the counseling and how helpful the young people and parents found it to be.

Who is giving the money for this project?

The Children's Aid Foundation finances us for two to three years, both the clinical positions for advice and the scientific evaluation.

We hope that with this we can prove the necessity of the outpatient clinic and then secure the financing in the long term via the health insurances or public third-party funds.

The consultation hour would not be possible without start-up funding from the foundation.