25th World Congress of Social Psychiatry
“CARING FOR THE VULNERABLE: MAKING SOCIAL PSYCHIATRY CLINICALLY RELEVANT”
dr. Leonida Zalokar, M.Sc.Psych.
Director of the Residential Treatment Institution Planina, SLOVENIA https://www.sc-planina.si/index.php/jeziki/jezik-eng
Raising children and adolescents between ideology and science
Mental disorders among children and adolescents in Europe are on the rise, as shown by numerous studies. In Slovenia, between 2008 and 2015, the number of treatments for children and adolescents with a final diagnosis of mental and behavioral disorders increased by 71%, and the number of prescriptions increased by almost 50%.
In practice, we can best observe that in the era of uncritical and arrogant neoliberalism and the worship of individuality, the right to personal freedom and the right to free choice, the line between what is right and what is wrong has completely blurred.
Family upbringing has become completely subject to the uncritical and unreasonable satisfaction of all the egoistic needs of the child – without restrictions, healthy critical judgment and prohibitions. The so-called permissive attitude is present in all pores of the social order (social services, education, justice, police), society is increasingly producing so-called disabled children who are not up to any burdens, frustrations, criticism.
In our contribution to the Conference, we want to present the results of a 20-year research on the incidence of mental disorders in children and adolescents in Residential Treatment Institution Planina (from 2004 to 2024), the increase in new forms of disorders, which we associate primarily with the theoretical, academic and political uncritical “emphasis” on children’s rights (without emphasis on their duties), which has led to a state of their complete callousness and lack of empathy towards others. Callous and unemotional traits of children and adolescents are increasingly present among us – we all know (do we?) that a complete reset of society is needed, as is the urgent re-definition of the family and upbringing, which must strive to raise a prosocial and empathetic individual.
Conferences of this kind should necessarily strive for this above all – to promote humanity.
LEONIDA ZALOKAR
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