“A child or young person who refuses to go to school should not be judged. We try to respond to the difficulties he or she is having. That doesn’t necessarily mean supporting him,” says Stefano Vicari, head of child and adolescent neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, hospital pediatrician Bambino Gesù from Rome and full professor of child neuropsychiatry at the Catholic University of Rome. L’Fear of school It is a disease that is on the rise: it affects between 5 and 28% of children and adolescents