An innovative support system for college and high school students with an anxious school refusal seems to provide the beginning of a solution. The Maison des adolescents de Strasbourg indeed unveiled on Monday the first results, “encouraging”, of its Brik’école.
“We are really happy with the results: out of 16 young people supported in 2021-2022, 12 returned to school at the end of the care”, rejoiced Alexandre Feltz, general practitioner and president of the Maison des adolescents. from Strasbourg. The system, set up for the first time at the start of the 2021 school year, was renewed at the start of the 2022 school year with 15 former college and high school students with school phobia.
Creative workshops to free speech
“These are young people who can no longer go to school. Their anxiety is so strong, it’s physical, they can’t do it, ”explains Alexandre Feltz. “But they can go to other places, where we don’t talk about their anxiety anymore, which allows them to re-engage and think about something else. »
Funded by the Regional Health Agency, National Education, the Family Allowance Fund and the City of Strasbourg for an annual budget of 200,000 euros, Brik’école offers both artistic workshops, courses and care from child psychiatrists and psychologists. “These young people are often no longer able to put their difficulties into words, some are depressed, others are at risk of suicide”, analyzes Delphine Rideau, director of the Maison des adolescents. “Going through creative workshops allows them to express what concerns them, and then work on it. »
Pauline, 16, out of school since 4th grade, has thus returned to a CAP after having benefited from the system for a year. “I couldn’t go to school anymore, it was too insecure a place,” she says. “What helped me the most was being understood, not being judged, and going at my own pace. Thanks to that I found a path that I like. »
The Covid-19 pandemic would have accentuated the problem
According to doctors from the National Education, a hundred young people presented an “anxious school refusal” in 2017, and the numbers have increased since the Covid-19 pandemic. “We must consolidate this system, with permanent means, and distribute it because it is not only in Alsace that teenagers suffer”, underlines Delphine Rideau. “But the challenge is also to think about prevention, about how to avoid this anxiety. We cannot infinitely create devices to absorb it. »