Mental health improved among some children during COVID-19 pandemic
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Key takeaways:
- Children with poor pre-pandemic mental health experienced significant improvements in symptoms.
- Girls experienced increased externalizing problems compared with boys.
Some groups of children appeared to experience improved mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic when compared with pre-pandemic conditions, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.
“Children [who] we would have expected to fare worse during the pandemic, like those with more significant behavior problems prior to the pandemic, improved,” Kaja Z. LeWinn, ScD, epidemiologist and professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, told Healio. “It may be that, for these children, a break from school-related stressors and demands benefited their mental health.”
The longitudinal cohort study included 1,229 participants (50.9% girls) with a mean age of 8.07 years (standard deviation [SD], 1.83 years) before the COVID-19 pandemic and 10.68 years (SD, 2.29 years) during the pandemic.
The researchers used parent-reported mental health data collected by Child Behavior Checklists (CBCL) through the NIH’s Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. They collected pre-pandemic responses between Jan. 1, 2015, and March 12, 2020, and midpandemic responses from March 13, 2020, to Aug. 31, 2022. CBCL scores below 65 were considered normal, scores of 65 to 70 were considered borderline and scores above 70 indicated clinically meaningful behavior issues.
The researchers saw the most significant mental health improvements among boys, younger children and children in lower income households.
Children younger than 12 years with clinically meaningful internalizing scores before the pandemic experienced a 3.4-point decrease in symptoms, but older children saw a half-point increase.
Among children with borderline internalizing problems, boys experienced a two-point reduction in symptoms, whereas girls’ scores increased by an average of 1.6 points. However, both girls and boys with clinically meaningful internalizing problems experienced reduced symptoms during the pandemic (4 points for girls vs. 1.4 points for boys).
“Youth entering the pandemic with borderline or clinical range CBCL scores experienced medium-to-large decreases in all scores (approximately 0.5-1 SDs), particularly for externalizing problems, suggesting real and meaningful reductions in mental health problems for these children,” the researchers wrote.
Black children and children from low-income families experienced less severe ADHD symptoms, the researchers wrote, whereas white children and youth from higher income households saw no change.
“By identifying which individual characteristics were associated with improvements and which were associated with declines in mental health, pediatricians and other health professionals can better identify those most at risk while also identifying potential resiliency factors that can help protect youth mental health even during times of great social and economic crisis,” Courtney K. Blackwell, PhD, associate professor in the department of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told Healio.
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