1/16/2021 Dr. Lok Kin Shing Seminar
~Shi Liang Guobing Record
Since the beginning of last year, we began to hear that the new crown virus came from China, spread to Europe and then to the United States.We began to hear about the outbreak of patients in New York, Washington and other places. Now the virus has entered the third wave and has spread to the whole of the United States. We stare at the TV every day to understand what is going on.
It is hard not to pay attention to the amazing data: last week, 2,100,000,000 people contracted the new coronavirus.10 people out of every 68.7 people will get the new crown virus every day. As of last week, the total number of deaths was 359,849.This number is huge, and many people have died from the epidemic.Recently, we are finally feeling a little excited. Thanks to the efforts of the pharmaceutical companies and the government, the vaccine has finally been born.
Starting in March, schools and nurseries began to close.Many people have to work at home, and children also have to attend classes at home.The parents also stay at home.The economy is falling, creating a lot of anxiety.When we were quarantined, we began to feel so lonely, retired and worried, and felt strongly trapped.These emotions began to produce some invisible damage.We won't talk about damage in this area often, because this is not a physical condition or damage, but it can cause emotional problems in children or even adults.
Live impact observation:
Children's growth process issues-
Dr. Locke observed that some of his children who came for physical examination had some significant changes before and after the new crown. For example, a child who has always been cheerful, lively, and likes to talk, but now becomes silent, anxious, and has no increase in language skills. And felt he was nervous.There are some who have always spoken normally, but now his language ability has declined.
Anxiety and anxiety in adolescents-
According to the CDC's National Emergency Room Mental Health Assessment, the comparison between 2019 and last year's data shows that in 2020, there will be an increase of 11% for the five to 24-year-old age group, and 12% for the 17-year-old to 31 year old.Children usually don't go to the emergency room. They go to the emergency room because they have serious symptoms, such as panic symptoms, chest pain, self-harm, and suicidal tendencies.In fact, more people may only seek help from doctors, psychologists or social welfare, but they are not included in the data.However, Dr. Locke believes that there are many people who have mild symptoms and never seek treatment because the parents have not noticed, or the parents themselves are too busy, or have other problems to deal with, so these psychological symptoms continue, and some even affect the child's life.
Children's challenges:
- Close schools and daycare
- Parental pressure-work, finances, working at home while taking care of children
- Stop all regular activities
- Loss of health care
- Living and eating are not safe due to economic problems
- isolation
- Most of the time is spent on TV, video games or the Internet
- Limited sports, outdoor and social activities
- Can't see relatives and friends
- Talking about the virus epidemic
result:
- Delays the development of social, speech, and muscle movement
- Loss of security
- anxiety
- Abused and neglected
Challenges for teenagers:
- In addition to all the changes in children
- Loss of effective learning and education opportunities
- Lost time to communicate with friends and the community
- Missing major events in life, such as celebrations and holiday plans, etc.
- Develop bad habits (playing video games all day, going to bed late and getting up late), resulting in poor health and an average weight gain of 5 pounds
- Mood changes
- Anxiety, depression, and loss of hope
Dr. Locke believes that although the impact of the epidemic is not optimistic, he believes that we can defeat the virus and will definitely defeat the virus.Here are his suggestions:
- Protect the elderly-
In the data analysis epidemic, the mortality rate of each age group: 65% over 9 years old; 17% for zero to 0.014 years old; 18%-64% for 0.04-4.4 years old. In other words, the highest risk is over 65 years old. Elderly people with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and low immune function.The recovery rate of other ages is very high, 98 to 99%, but although the death rate of people aged 18-64 is low, they are spreaders, so for ourselves, we must abide by all epidemic prevention measures to avoid infection. And pass it to others.
Effective prevention:
- Wear a mask, everyone wears a mask, the infection can be reduced to 1.5%
- Maintain social distancing-6 feet
- Wash hands often
- Avoid touching eyes and nose
- Often use disinfectant to clean the surface of objects
- Stay home when sick
2. Protection of children and young people-
The biggest problem for children and adolescents is not getting the virus, but the psychological problems caused by the virus.Therefore, we must pay attention to whether they have any signs of pressure due to the new crown epidemic.
a. Children-
- Growth milestones progress slowly or even regress
- Very unhappy, refuses to eat, refuses the food they originally liked
- When they go to places they like, they shrink back, refuse to leave you and even hold your thighs.
- Refusing to play with children, refusing to go to the playground
- Becomes aggressive, hits, bites, loses temper, yells, lying on the ground
- I didn't have bedwetting before and now I start to wet the bed, or go to the bathroom often.
Effective help:
- There is a stable routine-it will not change often, which is not easy for children.In the morning, there is a fixed time to wake up, breakfast time, lunch time, and dinner time.
- Fixed family time-in fact, I think that during the epidemic, we have the opportunity to improve our family relationship and even affect their future.
- Family activities-decorating the house, activities they enjoy.This epidemic gives us some opportunities. We have to increase family time and play games together. We can play card games, family games and video games. We talk together, mainly talking, and parents have to invest.
- Increase outdoor activities, go to the park, go camping, ride a bicycle together, read a book together, and then exchange the contents of the book with each other, listen to them, and see what they have learned
- Online time for relatives and friends-allows them to connect with the outside world. They may be worried about the current situation of their friends or relatives, or they can do these activities every other day, preferably every day.You can also help other people, such as your relatives and friends, your children's friends, so that they can contact.
- If there is no elderly at home, you can consider finding some healthy playmates or safe daycare
b. Youth-
- There is a change in weight
- Concentration is weakened because their thinking is occupied by pressure.
- School grades have declined because their minds cannot be concentrated.
- Changed appearance, uncut
- Participating in risky or reckless behavior, such as using drugs or alcohol
- Become moody, irritable, angry
- Conflicts with friends and family and withdraw from relationships because they feel that no matter what they do, they will always be wrong
- No hope for the future, they don’t want to invest anymore
- Lost interest in activities that I have always liked
- They have sleep problems, they can’t sleep at night, can’t enter deep sleep, and some of them stay in bed and refuse to get up.
Effective help:
- Pay attention to general health balance.
- Help them establish family relationships.
- Continue to build relationships with other children online.
- Make sure they often exercise, are outdoors, ride bicycles, and play ball with friends.
- Establishing good hobbies or new interests, stacking models, building furniture, decorating garages, learning cooking together, etc., make them feel the pleasure of accomplishing their goals.
- Increase family activities, and even play video games together, increase the time these are together, and play games that let us completely relax.
- Remind everyone to watch the news to a limited extent and set boundaries for video games and computers, because these make children autistic, unhappy, and addicted. It is best to cut the current time by half.
- Pay attention to enough sleep, enough sleep to make a person happy.
- Be grateful and remind them of what they have. It is easy for us to often think of what we don’t have. Remind them of what we already have. We have food, clothes, our whole family, and we are still healthy. In short, parents should lead by example in this regard. .
- Set up a family meeting and let them participate, but you must make the meeting fun.Let them participate in deciding some family activities, they like to go hiking there, but also let them take some responsibilities and make choices so that they will be more willing to participate because they have a plan to participate.
- Learn how to help others, a teenager in Dr. Locke’s group, he is in grade 9 and he is involved in helping people in the local community.Once Dr. Luo asked him, you got strength from there. Although he was trapped at home for so long, he said that every time he went out to distribute food to those in need, he felt very happy and felt that my life was meaningful. He could Affect the lives of others.
Parents also need help.Research tells us that in the epidemic, depression symptoms in adults have been increasing, from 16.2% to 24.6% in mild cases, 5.7% to 14.8% in moderate cases, 2.1% to 7.9% in moderately severe cases, and 0.7% to 5.1% in severe cases. %, these figures are very, very scary, especially the severe 5.1%.There is severe depression in the crowd. If you are an adult, you feel very worried, showing symptoms of anxiety and depression. As mentioned earlier, you must seek help by yourself, knowing that as parents, we love our children more than ourselves. Many, but you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of your children.Especially when we talked about how to help anxious young people, we can prevent them from getting worse and prevent them from falling into depression. The measures mentioned above can be implemented together as a family to take care of yourself and help your children. Helping yourself is helping your child, don't delay finding medical services!