Adolescent discomfort and the incidence of drugs in Sassari. These are the topics dealt with in recent days in the V Municipal Commission by the director of the SerD, Professor Paolo Milia, invited by the president Virginia Orunesu and by the councilor for social services Gianfranco Meazza.
"In 2022 - says Milia at Palazzo Ducale - we assisted 1935 people in the Pathological Addiction Area of the ASL". Among these several minors who, as well as for adults, are mostly males in a percentage of 96%. "Twelve-year-olds start in middle school with cannabis - reports the psychiatrist - one in four boys use it".
The sequence then sees young people switch to alcohol, cocaine and, finally, evergreen heroin. “It's an old drug but it's king in the city”. And there are about a thousand people treated for the consumption of "brown sugar".
“However, there is an underground world of drug addicts who do not access our services, often out of shame. And yet with us entry takes place in complete anonymity”. Worrying among young people is the intake of substances whose effects sometimes translate into real psychosis: "With frequent hospitalizations in Sassari in psychiatry due to hallucinations, dysperceptions, and persecutory thoughts".
The social origin of those who use it is then transversal and also includes the wealthy classes: "We have also noticed that the traumatic divorces of parents can cause a problematic development of the personality in children".
For the remedies there are the psychological treatments offered by the SerD thanks to a multidisciplinary team. “However - commissioner Meazza intervenes - we also need to support families, who are increasingly unstable and fragile. It is one of the points of our administration's policies together with the recovery of the direct relationship with schools and institutions."