Sardinian children's mental health issues are a concern: "The situation is disastrous."

It's the emergency that's being passed over in silence, the last wheel of the wagon of a public health system that commits the majority of its (meager) resources to caring for adults and the elderly, the majority of the population, especially in a region of elderly people like Sardinia.

The number of children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders is growing exponentially : autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, physical and mental disabilities, intellectual disabilities, learning and language problems.

An emergency that, warns Stefano Sotgiu, director of the Child Neuropsychiatry Complex Unit at the University of Sassari, "affects approximately 20% of the pediatric population." On the island, the 0-14 age group (158,000 in 2024) comprises 32,000 children .

All the details are in Piera Serusi's article in L'Unione Sarda, available on newsstands and on the L'Unione Digital app.