The alarm of psychological distress in adolescents began to sound with overwhelming insistence, with no room to be silenced. Telling isolated stories was no longer enough to convey the magnitude of the phenomenon, which is confirmed not only in Argentina, but also worldwide with relentless figures.

How to present the problem without generating panic? How to converse with the protagonists who have just come out of the nightmare or are still going through it? How can prevention guidelines be offered on such a sensitive issue?

From LA NACION we proposed make visible this uncomfortable reality, narrate without taboos and in all its complexity the drama that stuns thousands of families. The series “Do you know what is going through your child’s head?”, launched a week ago, required different stages of work, always with the advice of experts.

To measure the problem, the first step was to approach the most recognized specialists and institutions: child and youth psychiatrists and psychologists did not hesitate to speak of an adolescent mental health crisis exacerbated by the pandemic and with serious forms of manifestation, such as self-harm and ideas of death in the most extreme cases.

During interviews with different professionals, we heard how the number of boys who cut their legs and arms skyrockets for not being able to bear the suffering or girls with ravaged bodies that tremble when they have a plate of food in front of them.

Although there are still no systematized statistics in Argentina, behind every door we knocked on there was a cataract of information waiting to be told. Just some data: hospitalizations for suicide attempts almost tripled in 2021 compared to 2019, according to Garrahan Hospital records; the demand in the emergency center for child and adolescent psychiatry of the Italian Hospital grew by 47%; At the Aiglé Foundation, consultations for eating disorders increased by 100% compared to 2019, for self-harm, by 60%.

The gap between the stimuli that invade social networks and the adolescent’s ability to process them emerges as one of the causes described by specialists to explain the crisis. On the other hand, they consider that an earlier onset of puberty, which coexists with areas of the brain that take longer to mature, may also have had an impact. However, the effects of the confinement due to Covid-19 appear, almost without exception, as determining factors to trigger or aggravate the pictures.

The editorial debates took on a singular richness and there were some decisions with consensus from the beginning: to protect the identity of the interviewees, all the names would be fictitious, an exception in our journalistic tradition. Still overwhelmed parents agreed to participate in extensive conversations to recount their experiences. “I never thought that my daughter could want to die.” “Isolation due to the pandemic ended up detonating it.” “She kept the medication in my office, so I wouldn’t have it at home, but I was also afraid of sharp things.” “Every night with my husband we ask ourselves: ‘How did this happen to us?'” The shock is replicated in the different homes, even in families where nothing was missing and everything seemed to work.

The journalist María Ayuso, seasoned for covering harrowing realities in her Community agenda, returned to the newsroom moved after each report. Above all, she was moved by the meetings with two young people, one in treatment and the other recovered, in which she saw very closely the faces of unbearable pain. “They were certain that this suffering took on another meaning if it could serve someone. His ‘thanks for listening to me’ will stay with me forever”, says María.

Fabiola Czubaj -who has specialized in health issues for 20 years, now from the Society section- inquired about medicated adolescents, the second production of the series, and verified a trend that she knows well: too much data in the shadows. But something encouraged her: the awareness of doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists about the need to actively record figures to give the phenomenon its true relevance, as happened in other countries.

Lifting the veil of this suffering also meant a forceful visual approach, without exposing the intimacy of the protagonists. Designers, photographers and videographers worked with extreme sensitivity and professionalism with that premise. The real image of the arm of an adolescent in which cuts from past times can still be distinguished or the drawings of a recovering patient are part of the narrative of this proposal, which allows entering into the darkest corners of a world that can no longer be so distant or alien.

For years, at LA NACION we have assumed the commitment to make mental health problems visible on a sustained basis, also offering tools to our audience for prevention and early detection. Although disorders in adolescents have always been treated, we glimpsed in this crisis something unprecedented that deserved a comprehensive approach, with the contribution of all profiles, transversal to all sections of the newspaper and all platforms to give the issue the centrality it deserves.

Putting the phenomenon on the agenda was urgent. And offer some guidance as well. In addition to the service information, we developed an interactive guide with questions related to everyday situations so that readers can identify themselves. Do you know the contents that your child browses on his cell phone? Does your daughter sit at the table at mealtime? According to each answer, a feedback prepared by professionals with whom we had extensive meetings during the last month is displayed. The key is to identify clues to ask for help and know where to turn.

The overflow of doctors with incessant demands, the intervention of schools in the face of a reality that reaches the classrooms and the new forms of drug use are some of the next approaches.

The repercussions after the first publications were a reflection of the need that existed to shed light on this condition. The messages of health professionals offering their collaboration to give continuity to the problem invaded our cell phones. There was also massive gratitude from parents who, they say, feel less alone.