SJ Magazine, April 2022 Issue
By Jayne Jacova Feld
As we start to come out of the pandemic, healthcare professionals are sounding an alarm. Kids aren’t ok. In fact, they’re not doing well at all. So parents, teachers, therapists, everyone: You need to look around. Check on the young people in your life. Because while you may think the last 2 years have been tough, you’re an adult. Kids and teens had an entirely different experience and fewer life lessons to know how to cope. So now their recovery begins. And it won’t be easy. Because they’re really not ok.
In the early days of the pandemic, mental health workers worried that an overwhelming number of South Jersey kids would need help coping with the many ways their lives changed seemingly overnight.
“Even before the pandemic, there was a noticeable rise in anxiety and depression among kids,” says Michelle Carlamere, director of Outpatient and Community Services at Oaks Integrated Care. “Then when Covid hit, it got very quiet – and that made us very nervous.”
