While we sleep, the body recovers from the day's experiences. Restful sleep is therefore essential for physical and mental preparation to face the new day. However, the reality is that one in three children and adolescents do not get the necessary sleep, which impacts their physical, mental, and emotional health. According to the latest FAROS report from the School of Health at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Barcelona, ​​17% of children go to school sleepy and 4% fall asleep in class. For adolescents, the figures are even more alarming, as 52% admit to going to school having slept less than 8 hours, and 84% have difficulty waking up.

It's Monday and Matthew and Aidan, aged six and eight respectively, are at the Sant Pau pediatric day hospital. While receiving treatment, each one entertains himself as best he can: the former with a tablet and the latter with a mobile phone. Suddenly, Laura and Gisela, professional storytellers, burst into the room in their lab coats, tights, and colorful flip-flops, and their cart (a customized wheelchair) full of books, and ask the children if they'd like to hear a story. They both answer affirmatively. For Matthew, this is his first contact with the children. Tales that healFrom that moment on, the two little ones stop being just patients and become what they are: children who let themselves be carried away by the magic of a story, who are infected by the emotion with which the storytellers tell the adventures of the Pirate Malapata and Bunny Ralph, who laugh and interact with each other—when they previously didn't even know each other—while imagining, with the help of the narrators, that they are aboard a pirate ship.

Eating disorders (ED) have doubled among Catalan teenagers since the lockdown due to the Covid pandemic. Diagnoses have increased especially among girls between 10 and 19 years old, regardless of their socioeconomic level and family situation. However, anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders are not only the domain of children and adolescents. The Catalan health survey indicates that there are currently more than 85,000 people who suffer from some type of ED. All these data were revealed last October, within the framework of a Sant Pau Talks in which, through several professionals from the hospital's ED unit and the witnesses of some of its former patients, the causes and personal and family effects of this group of mental illnesses were addressed, as well as the phases of their journey and the importance of this cure.