“Masks for children must be ended urgently”

“Marie-Estelle Dupont is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist...”

“Humanity has always overcome wars, diseases, famines. At the end of 2019, a virus appeared. A thunderclap in a medical sky that we hoped was becoming ever more serene. It is very contagious. But very rarely fatal. Its symptoms are numerous, but the people at risk were quickly identified. It hardly affects children at all. They are said to be vectors of it, but to what extent is unknown. We have become so fearful, so cautious, and also so proud in the face of death, of finitude, that we have forgotten that medicine is not all-powerful and that young people do not have to carry adults. So schools were closed, for a year in the United States, for a few weeks in France. And the mask was imposed, everywhere, all the time, without the paediatricians, psychologists and child psychiatrists concerned about its extension to the youngest being listened to.”
“Nothing has proven that masks at school reduced transmission, especially since children take them off in the canteen, touch them to readjust them, do not necessarily change them, and even lend them to each other. Let us be honest, even we adults find them downright unbearable for concentrating and talking. What child could bear it other than through an adaptive regression prompting them to reduce their processing of information and their attention to their environment and to themselves, at an age when they are supposed to become aware of their bodies and learn to control them reasonably? Not to mention the climate of mistrust it creates at an age when self-confidence goes hand in hand with confidence in the world. Not to mention the guilt that hangs like a sword of Damocles, giving a tragic and grave tone to every arrival at school. When we know that anxiety and stress are negatively correlated with learning, it is a real gamble on the future that we are making! Fear appeals, well known in public health psychology, risk justifying a measure that is not only useless but counterproductive for children, generating physical, mental and social, cognitive and emotional health problems in the short, medium and long term.”
“Masking children for a disease that does not concern them signifies the defeat of our thinking and our loss of dignity. Masked, and for good reason, we have lost face in this affair. We have given up liberty, equality and fraternity, in particular by masking children. Yet one only succeeds on the basis of one’s values. Not by imitating other countries where everything is different only when it saves us from questioning ourselves. We adults are responsible for these children. It will never be the other way round.”

“Psychologists, paediatricians and child psychiatrists – many of us are very worried about the rise in hospitalisations and in the disorders that young children have been developing since the first lockdown. Up to six times more admissions to child psychiatry at Necker, defenestrations at Robert Debré, and so on.”

"“The fact that a toddler sees only masked faces at the crèche is very worrying, because their interactions being essentially non-verbal, they are deprived of essential reference points.” - Marie-Estelle Dupont"

“On 10 February 2021, a statement from the Collège de pédopsychiatrie recalled the consequences of the health measures on children and adolescents: sleep and behavioural disorders, repeated crying, self-harm, delayed speech and learning, growing anxiety and fear, addictions, withdrawal, depressive symptoms, somatisation, an increase in domestic violence and suicidal thoughts. In other words, some doctors find themselves obliged to remind others of the basics of the development of the little human and of paediatrics.”

“The fact that a toddler sees only masked faces at the crèche is very worrying, because their interactions being essentially non-verbal, they are deprived of essential reference points.”

“A child’s physical, neurological, cognitive, emotional and social development requires something other than masked days. The realisation of everything that exists as genetic potential between the ages of 0 and 12 dictates their needs. These needs constitute our duties, and cannot be renegotiated in the light of our fears, our unresolved existential anxieties and a precautionary principle elevated to a state religion.”

“Until about the first year of secondary school, the synaptic connections responsible for transmitting nerve impulses in the brain grow exponentially, causing the various lobes of the brain to grow, in particular the lobes responsible for inhibiting action (when it is dangerous, for example). These connections need oxygen for the brain to establish its faculties properly. When masked, children who wear glasses have to take them off because they fog up. Headaches, difficulty hearing the masked teacher, attention taken up by countless precautions or readjustments – all this generates a considerable loss of energy and concentration, for results that are probably very counterproductive, since few children actually change their mask during the day and in any case they breathe in their own nasal discharge at 37°. So please do not talk to me about hygiene, or I may burst out laughing.
Mask-wearing and the fatigue it generates have led to a loss of learning in children, including good pupils from privileged backgrounds. Teachers see it, and so do parents. Dropping out, exhaustion, nightmares, lack of motivation, forgetfulness are multiplying. Of course they adapt. The younger you are, the more the brain adapts. Eye movements are more numerous to allow the baby to process as much information as possible. Let us above all not place them in sensory deprivation, with parents who, moreover, are sometimes worried about the virus, hesitate to cuddle them and curb the spontaneity of a tenderness that is decisive for making them balanced citizens, neither violent nor depressed!”

"“Perhaps we could avoid committing social suicide by creating a generation of emotionally handicapped people who think touching each other is dangerous and no longer look at each other?” - Marie-Estelle Dupont"

“Children are champions at reassuring adults and saying that ‘everything is going as usual’. And what if ‘as usual’ already meant a great torpor? What values are we passing on to them by aligning them with our fears, without any proof of the usefulness of this measure? Who are we to trivialise depriving children of the human face and of normal breathing? Who are we to pride ourselves on making them bear our immaturity? The lasting damage caused by these measures, even if it is still sometimes kept quiet or underestimated, will never find a vaccine. One does not build one’s identity in generalised anonymity. One does not become an aligned, balanced, mature and autonomous adult in an obsessive and psychologically rigid environment. Or at any rate, it will cost us an incalculable number of visits to the psychologist for suffering that is difficult to describe, because it is trivialised and justified by the need to ‘protect’ life.”

“‘The lack of oxygenation and the inhalation of CO2 in the mask are moreover likely to drastically reduce the capacities of the immune system, leading in the short term to headaches, fatigue, irritability and physical and psychological vulnerability. The long-term consequences remain unpredictable to this day’, one of my colleagues wrote to the mayors several months ago. A colleague who sees children in consultation but has none herself and therefore cannot be accused of portraying her own offspring as victims.”

“We are talking here about biology, neurology, immunity and cognitive development. We are talking about the adults of tomorrow. No sentimentality in my words, just a simple observation: this potentially causes behavioural and communication disorders in the youngest, who are learning to speak, as well as disorders in the development of relational, social and emotional skills. I find it utterly sickening to entrust the youngest at the crèche to masked adults. The face is identity, said Levinas. To lose face, to have no face, is indeed to lose honour and dignity. And some dare to say that childhood illnesses decreased this winter? Gastroenteritis perhaps, thanks to hand-washing and to hygiene that admittedly sometimes left something to be desired in schools or homes. But sore throats and bronchiolitis were there. No, we do not want children to keep wearing masks at school, precisely for reasons of public health, but also for moral and philosophical reasons. Neither today nor tomorrow. It is not a societal choice that will allow health, creativity and civil peace. It maintains fear, and fear breeds violence.”

“The face is the main vector of emotions. Children become socialised by developing their empathy, in other words their ability to decode the emotions of others. Otherwise they become maladjusted, with traits close to autism or psychopathy: aggressive, impulsive, with no notion of the consequences of their actions or words on others. A lack of empathy endangers the lives of others and sometimes one’s own. We are denying their needs and thus teaching them to deny themselves. How could they become balanced and responsible?”

“We already had video games and social networks; perhaps we could avoid committing social suicide by creating a generation of emotionally handicapped people who think touching each other is dangerous and no longer look at each other?”

“Humans sometimes adapt too well. After lockdown, this results in ‘cabin syndromes’, young people who no longer want to go out or who are afraid of everything. Likewise, some will have found secondary benefits in a ‘barrier gesture’ that allows them not to overcome their anxieties and to avoid the gaze of others. That gaze which makes existence, which must be tamed, which one must learn both to put into perspective and to respect.”

"“The addictions and loss of meaning that will arise from these disproportionate measures will be far more damaging to us than a virus” - Marie-Estelle Dupont"

“Dermatologists have their work cut out. Between stress-related somatisation and mask-related spots, the skin – which, as we know, is so much the interface with others – is taking a beating.”

“Under no fallacious pretext of reducing transmission will it be acceptable to us, parents as well as psychologists or paediatricians, for the coming school year to put mask-wearing for children and adolescents on the agenda. Parents must not be pushed into taking their children out of school in the land of compulsory education. Yes, parents are responsible for knowing what constitutes mistreatment. And yes, many parents rightly consider that this is the case. In a country where everything has become mistreatment and where the child, out of convenience and cowardice or the desire to be loved, is often treated like a king or even accepted as a tyrant, it would be wise to discern what is truly violence or mistreatment, and in what way the famous ‘it’s for your own good’ (or worse, it’s for my own good) is a genuine banalisation of evil.”

“One of my little patients cried in September while drawing his masked parents for me: ‘but we’re not dogs, why are we putting muzzles on them’. He was sad and his parents had no answer to give him. He no longer smiled and no longer spoke. No longer seeing his parents smile at an age when love is mimicry, he had closed off his little face, wearing the invisible yet palpable mask of melancholy. His parents were applying the law. Terribly embarrassed to see their little one seized by nightmares and fits of tears. They asked me for a certificate for school which, of course, I was forbidden to provide. We are helplessly witnessing a major deterioration in the mental and physical health of human beings in full growth. We managed to keep schools open as much as possible. We are therefore capable of working on our fears and erasing them from the faces of our little ones. Because this mask expresses fear. It evokes Munch’s Scream. These faces without mouths which, as we know, symbolically signify psychosis, madness, the breaking of the bond with others. A child who does not draw the mouth is often in a pre-psychotic state. Let us stop throwing them into madness.”

“The emergence of anxiety, behavioural and learning disorders has literally swamped the consultations of childhood professionals.
A little girl explained to me that she no longer wanted to give cuddles because when you cuddle you touch each other! A teenager told me she was afraid to go to class and kept her mask on at home. They have digested our fears. And we know that fear is at the root of many mental health disorders. A year after the start of the crisis, we have an extremely weakened young generation, and it seems to me that the depression as well as the violence, the addictions and the loss of meaning that will arise from these disproportionate measures will be far more damaging to us than a virus.”

“It is clear that agonising choices have been forced upon our leaders, but it is my responsibility as a mother and a psychologist to make those who no longer have children or adolescents around them aware that the price we are making them (and therefore ourselves) pay is out of all proportion to the lethality of this virus. It is a matter of my professional ethics to warn of the dramatic consequences of continuing such mask-wearing measures for children. Silence gives consent, and I do not consent.”

Read the full article here:
https://www.lefigaro.fr

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BAM!

Photo source:
Image cropped from the original image by Johan Larson on AdobeStock