Saúde mental infantojuvenil e experiências de profissionais da educação no contexto da suspensão de atividades escolares presenciais na pandemia de Covid-19

Abstract

The general objective of this dissertation was to describe and analyze reports from teachers and coordinators of a municipal public school in Niterói-RJ about how they perceived their students during the COVID-pandemic19 and identify possible strategic actions of how the school addressed the theme of mental health during the period of social isolation and suspension of classroom school activities. The specific objective was to analyze publications of national and international health institutions related to the theme of children’s and youth mental health in the context of the pandemic, focusing on their correlations with the "closure" of schools. This is a qualitative research of exploratory nature in which there was a search on official websites of entities such as WHO/ PAHO, UNICEF, FIOCRUZ, ABRASME, ABRASCO, SBP and ABP, in order to identify the different discourses on the theme of children’s mental health. The study included the search in websites and other media of communication to contextualize socio-historical and culturally the period of social isolation in Brazil and the municipality in question. Six semi-structured interviews were conducted with the employees of that school, in order to know their experiences and experiences regarding remote education, hybrid teaching and its resumption to the classroom. The results obtained were heterogeneous discourses regarding: work overload; difficulties in adapting to remote education and access to the digital platform provided by the city hall; the lack of access to the Internet contributing to an absence of students in remote classes; the reception actions between teachers and between teacher/school-student; super presence of students with disabilities both in the proposed school activities, demand of parents and guardians during this period. As for the analysis of the materials published by the mentioned institutions, among the main published subjects, including the period from March 2020 to January 2023, are: epidemiological data on the impact of coronavirus on children and adolescents (number of confirmed cases, number of deaths and wave curvature); impacts of the pandemic on education; child and adolescent mental health and physical isolation; safe return to classes and reopening challenges. As regards mental health impacts, the documents pointed to: increased anxiety, depression, eating disorders, insomnia, nocturnal enuresis and other symptoms; disinterest and loss of perspective or future planning; disorganization or outbreaks in cases of people already in psychological distress, among others.