Ramaswamy Sheila, Seshadri Shekhar
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
Indian J Psychiatry. 2020 Sep;62(Suppl 3):S404-S413. doi: 10.4103/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_1032_20. Epub 2020 Sep 28.
In developing contexts such as India, children in adversity form a high-risk group, one that cannot be subsumed under the general category of children, who are generally considered as a vulnerable group in disaster and crisis situations. Child mental health issues in contexts of protection risks and childhood adversity tend to be over-looked in such crises. This article focuses on examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economic consequences on children in adversity, describing the increased child protection and psychosocial risks they are placed at, during and in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis and its lockdown situation. It specifically links the lockdown and the ensuing economic issues to sexuality and abuse-related risks, as occur in contexts of child labour, child sex work and trafficking, child marriage and child sexual abuse, and that result in immediate and long-term mental health problems in children. It proposes a disaster risk reduction lens to offer recommendations to address the emerging child protection, psychosocial and mental health concerns.
在印度这样的发展中环境中，处于困境的儿童构成了一个高风险群体，这一群体不能被归入通常被视为灾难和危机情况下弱势群体的儿童这一总体类别。在保护风险和童年逆境背景下的儿童心理健康问题在这类危机中往往被忽视。本文着重探讨新冠疫情及其社会经济后果对处于困境儿童的影响，描述在新冠危机及其封锁期间和紧接其后的时期，他们面临的儿童保护和心理社会风险增加的情况。它特别将封锁及随之而来的经济问题与性和虐待相关风险联系起来，这些风险出现在童工、儿童性工作和贩运、童婚及儿童性虐待等情况中，并导致儿童出现即时和长期的心理健康问题。它提出从减少灾害风险的角度提供建议，以解决新出现的儿童保护、心理社会和心理健康问题。
