Bavaria: Greens: Better prevention of mental illnesses

Mental illnesses are increasing in Bavaria among people of all ages – but especially among children and young people. Now the state parliament is to deal with the topic.

Munich (dpa / lby) – The Greens in the Bavarian state parliament are calling for a better system to identify mental illnesses at an early stage. Those affected must be protected and their relatives involved, said the parliamentary group in Munich. Mental illnesses are among the most common causes of sick leave and are increasingly affecting young people in particular. In the pandemic, the numbers rose again significantly.

The Greens demand that care services such as day clinics and parent-child stations for children and young people with mental illnesses must be expanded. The shortage of skilled workers and the pandemic meant that the facilities often reached their limits.

“The utilization of inpatient and semi-inpatient therapy facilities for children and young people is consistently high in all regions, often over 90 percent,” emphasized the Green Party leader Katharina Schulze. “In some districts it is even 100 percent and more.” The topic of mental illness is to be discussed on Tuesday in the Bavarian state parliament on the basis of a request from the Greens.

A report by the DAK health insurance company from mid-October showed that eating disorders and mental illnesses such as depression among Bavarian children and adolescents also increased, in some cases massively, in the second year of the pandemic, 2021. The basis for the results was a representative study, for which data from 107,000 children and young people from Bavaria insured with the DAK were evaluated.

According to this, the number of doctor visits during the pandemic decreased overall, with respiratory diseases, infectious diseases and muscular and skeletal diseases occurring less frequently. At the same time, however, the number of newly diagnosed mental illnesses and behavioral disorders increased – especially among older school children (10-14 years) and adolescents (15-17 years).