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. 2021 Apr;1(1):e12009.
doi: 10.1111/jcv2.12009. Epub 2021 Apr 28.

How did the mental health symptoms of children and adolescents change over early lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK?

Polly Waite  1   2   3 , Samantha Pearcey  1   2 , Adrienne Shum  1 , Jasmine A L Raw  2   3 , Praveetha Patalay  4 , Cathy Creswell  1   2
Affiliations

How did the mental health symptoms of children and adolescents change over early lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK?

Polly Waite et al. JCPP Adv. 2021 Apr.

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused extensive disruption to the lives of children and young people. Understanding the psychological effects on children and young people, in the context of known risk factors is crucial to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. This study set out to explore how mental health symptoms in children and adolescents changed over a month of full lockdown in the United Kingdom in response to the pandemic.

Methods: UK-based parents and carers (n = 2673) of school-aged children and young people aged between 4 and 16 years completed an online survey about their child's mental health at two time points between March and May 2020, during early lockdown. The survey examined changes in emotional symptoms, conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention.

Results: The findings highlighted particular deteriorations in mental health symptoms among preadolescent children, which translated to a 10% increase in those meeting possible/probable caseness criteria for emotional symptoms, a 20% increase in hyperactivity/inattention, and a 35% increase in conduct problems. In contrast, changes among adolescents were smaller (4% and 8% increase for hyperactivity/inattention and conduct problems, respectively) with a small reduction in emotional symptoms (reflecting a 3% reduction in caseness). Overall, there were few differences in change in symptoms or caseness over time according to demographic characteristics, but children and young people in low income households and those with special educational needs and/or neurodevelopmental disorders exhibited elevated symptoms (and caseness) at both time points.

Conclusions: The findings highlight important areas of concern in terms of the potential impact of the first national lockdown on children and young people's adjustment. Developing an understanding of who has been most severely affected by the pandemic, and in what ways, is crucial in order to target effective support where it is most needed.

Keywords: COVID‐19; United Kingdom; adolescent; children; lockdown; mental health; pandemic; youth.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there are no conflict of interests.Polly Waite and Cathy Creswell: conceptualisation, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, supervision, writing‐original draft, writing‐review & editing. Samantha Pearcey: data curation, formal analysis, project administration, writing‐original draft, writing‐review & editing. Adrienne Shum and Jasmine Raw: data curation, project administration, writing‐original draft, writing‐review & editing. Praveetha Patalay: conceptualisation, funding acquisition, methodology, supervision, writing‐review & editing.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Estimated marginal means and % caseness for Strenghts and Difficulties Questionnaire emotional symptoms, conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention from baseline to follow‐up, by age group
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Predicted means for Strenghts and Difficulties Questionnaire emotional symptoms, conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention from baseline to follow up, by age group and each moderator variable (with 95% CI error bars). CI, confidence interval
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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