Get informed, exchange ideas, shake up certainties on questions that are disturbing… This is the ambition of the European Bioethics Forum in Strasbourg. On the program for this fifteenth edition, from January 29 to February 1, 2025: mental health.
Last November, seven French families filed a complaint against the TikTok platform. At the heart of their fight is an algorithm accused of deteriorating the mental health of children by offering them deadly video content, some advocating suicide or scarification. Others, normalizing certain eating disorders. Among the children of these families, two 15-year-old girls committed suicide, four attempted to end their lives. A last one suffers from anorexia nervosa.
This legal action is a first in France and sheds light on a worrying subject: in what state is the mental health of our children? They are said to be locked on their screens, increasingly incapable of communicating and devoid of any hope in a world that generates anxiety for them. Do adults really understand what is at stake in their concerns? It is around these questions that a round table will be held in Strasbourg on February 1st.
-A World Health Organization (WHO) study from October 2024 reveals that globally one in seven young people aged 10 to 19 suffers from mental disorders. Julie Rolling, child psychiatrist at the Strasbourg University Hospitals, points out “individual, societal and global factors linked to globalization”which can lead to these problems. Responsible for the children, adolescents and family sector of the Grand Est Regional Psychotrauma Center, with 6,000 consultations per year and 600 adolescents monitored, Julie Rolling notes a sleep debt which has increased since 2015, with almost two hours of sleep in less, due largely to nighttime screen consumption. “Covid has highlighted relational problems, a social fear of others”asks Maurice Corcos, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst. Also head of the psychiatry department of the Institut Mutualiste Montsouris in Paris, he insists on the fact that children are the poor relation of the hospital and of care: “With only 500 practitioners, child psychiatry remains one of the specialties least chosen by students”he says. A real cause for concern for Maurice Corcos because with the number of practitioners halved in ten years, waiting times are lengthening between six months and a year for treatment. And in the meantime, the problems can sometimes get worse.
“We measure a society by the way it welcomes those who do not find their place there”observes François Ansermet. In Geneva, Switzerland, the psychoanalyst and honorary professor of child psychiatry is at the origin of the Maison de l’Enfance, launched in 2023. “The place is open to the city and integrates the child into the life of society, with activities around culture, arts and sciences”he explains. Not keen on an approach “paternalistic”completely negative on the mental health of children, François Ansermet prefers for example to “eco-lucidity” rather than “eco-anxiety”. Words are important… Serge Tisseron adds nuance on the same theme: “young people are certainly depressed, but they are mobilized! They are never as invested in associations for example.” Psychiatrist and member of the Academy of Technologies, he recalls that he “It’s not all bad on the Internet” : “There are also YouTubers who are good! The European Commission recognizes it: peer education works well, particularly on health issues among young people”.
