New Morbidity and Zeitgeist

The “New Morbidity in Childhood and Adolescence” is a term for different disorders that have become the focus of public attention in recent decades. Since the serious infectious diseases of childhood through vaccinations and antibiotics have lost their horror and since childhood cancer and congenital metabolic disorders, as well as congenital malformations, could be contained through early detection and treatment, new clinical pictures have occupied the treatment area. According to Schlack and Brockmann [238], these are in the narrower sense emotional and behavioral problems, functional disorders such as developmental disorders of language, problems of cognitive and motor skills, obesity and eating disorders as well as other risk behaviors like substance abuse and addictive behavior. In a broader sense, chronic somatic clinical pictures are also attributed to new morbidity, with the allergic diseases being particularly noteworthy here. The new morbidity has led to a shift in the focus of the disease spectra prevailing in childhood and adolescence since the 1960s [238].