Ricky Martin admits that COVID-19 has caused him anxiety

The Puerto Rican artist Ricky Martin joined the celebration of World Mental Health Day and admitted that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused anxiety, one of the most common mental disorders in the world.

“Like any parent, the pandemic of has caused me anxiety”, Martin starts in a video published on his Twitter account, as part of a UNICEF campaign on the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of children and young people and that it could last in the long term and on how to talk to this about your feelings.

Martin goes on to admit that he has felt “worried about how my own children are, about the health of my family and how we are going to overcome this situation”.

Luckily, Lucia Martin-Yosef’s father, Renn and twins Matteo and Valentino states: “I can protect my children from most of my worries, but for many families it is not like that”.

“Too many children are suffering because their mothers and fathers are suffering wondering how they will survive another day. To do the best for children, we have to improve the mental health of parents. When we support mothers, fathers and caregivers, we support children and young people,” emphasizes Martin.

The campaign “What’s on your mind?” explains how parents can start the conversation about mental health with their children based on their age.

Mental disorders affect some 16 million adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean and cause the economies of the region to stop receiving more than 30,000 million dollars a year by “preventing” them from working, UNICEF warned this past week.

Around 15% of adolescents between 10 and 19 years of age in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer from a diagnosed mental disorder, which represents about 16 million young people, this being the region of the world with the highest rates.

“At a global level, this percentage is 13%, in our region it is 15%, a little higher than the average” worldwide, detailed the regional specialist in Adolescence and HIV from Unicef ​​for Latin America and the Caribbean, Alejandra Trossero.

The Caribbean maintains “a slightly higher average, between 15% and 18%” with respect to the rest of the countries in the region, most of which do not have systems to report and register this type of mental problems among the young population.

These data, collected in 2019 – before the pandemic – detail that every day more than ten adolescents in the region lose their lives by suicide.

Within the “wide range” of mental disorders that affect young people in the region, the most common are anxiety and depression – which account for half of mental health problems and affect mostly girls – together with behavioral, eating and autism problems, Trossero said.

“We must also think about the living situation in which we are, with greater urbanization, increased poverty, greater human mobility”, he added.

The expert does not rule out that the covid-19 pandemic has “Deepened” these problems, but “the consequences are going to be seen in the future.”

“We did a survey last year asking young people how they felt during the pandemic, 27% of the more than 8,000 young people reported having suffered some anxiety or depression due to covid-19″, he detailed.