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Has the pandemic caused or worsened mental illness in children?

2022-06-03T22:21:24.827Z


The CDC considers that there is a mental health crisis among children and adolescents, a marked increase in mental illness, sadness and hopelessness.


Study reveals that the pandemic affected the mental health of children 1:54

Editor's Note:

Psychologist John Duffy, author of "Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety," practices in Chicago.

He is specialized in working with adolescents, parents, couples and families.

(CNN) --

There is a crisis in adolescent mental health, suggesting a marked rise in adolescent mental illness, sadness and hopelessness, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (CDC).

These results lead many experts to question whether the pandemic fueled a rise in diagnosable mental disorders in adolescents or whether the impact of Covid-19 exacerbated symptoms in adolescents who already had emotional problems.


As a psychologist with experience treating preteens and teens, I've seen more kids in my practice who said their anxiety, depression, and attention problems were getting significantly worse.

I wondered if my experience was typical, so I turned to Dr. John Walkup, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Ann & Robert H. Children's Hospital. Chicago Lurie.

Walkup believes that the pandemic has not caused an increase in the incidence of mental illness among adolescents, but has "unmasked symptoms" that could otherwise have been controlled.

I spoke with Walkup to discuss the results of their research and what parents and caregivers can do to help their children at this time.

CNN: You're saying that it's not that we've seen a lot of new mental illnesses in children in the last two years, but that these are difficulties that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, correct?

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Dr. John Walkup:

Yes. You know, 20% of kids have a mental health problem before they graduate from high school on average in the United States.

Only half of these children receive any type of evaluation or treatment, and of that population only 40% obtain clinically significant benefits.

That is, about 15% of children who have a mental health problem receive help.

If you take away school, family, peer support and sports, force them to stay home, those kids are not going to do well eventually.

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There's probably a small group of kids with prolonged covid where you could say there's some direct impact of covid on the brain, but it's a pretty small group of kids.

But overall, when we think about what covid has done, it's really destroyed the infrastructure for kids with mental health issues.

If we think about it a little deeper, we've been advocating for children's mental health for a long time.

Families and schools are more aware of mental health issues, so now we have this kind of perfect storm of increased awareness and increased advocacy, resulting in a greater need for care.

And the structure for that care has fallen in the last two years.

CNN: Given these numbers, do you think the pandemic will shed some light on children's mental health needs that we wouldn't have seen without this crisis?

Walkup: I think we would have had more awareness anyway because the efforts exist.

We now have effective treatments for all the major psychiatric disorders in children, and the treatments are good.

Once you have treatments, you can advocate effectively, right?

That is why, before the pandemic, more and more children were coming to receive care, good care.

But when all the supporting infrastructure (school, activities, etc.) is taken away, those children are going to become symptomatic much more quickly.

Without that infrastructure, we have seen a dramatic and unexpected increase in pathology.

CNN: You highlight a distinction between mental illness and distress.

What is the difference?

Walkup:

Anxiety and sadness are normal human emotions.

Anxiety helps us prepare for difficult outcomes, and sadness helps us draw closer to people.

What we work on in terms of mental illness are the pathological forms of anxiety or sadness.

That's clinical depression and anxiety disorders, and those things are qualitatively different from normal human sadness or normal expectable and proportionate anxiety.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when kids didn't know what to expect, they had higher rates of normal anxiety and distress because they're not with their friends and they're not in school.

They have questions about their future.

But that is not pathological.

It is expected, proportional and understandable, and it will disappear when things normalize.

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CNN: You also suggest that the pandemic has had a greater impact on girls and the LGBT community.

Do you have any idea why?

Walkup:

When the pandemic hit, more children who had not been treated or had been treated poorly began to come to the clinic.

The prevalence of anxiety and depression in young women is higher than in men, which may explain the disproportion in seeking treatment.

More girls have needed help that has not existed in the last two years.

In the LGBT community, those young people fight.

It's hard to be different when you're young.

This group also experiences higher rates of bullying.

Many feel that they don't necessarily fit in even within their own families.

Therefore, it is to be expected that they will have to fight during this period, and they have.

CNN: What risk factors should parents and caregivers look for now?

Walkup:

This is really important.

Parents should look at their family history.

If there is a psychiatric disorder somewhere in the family history, keep in mind that these things are genetic.

They pass from one generation to another.

It is also important for parents to understand that these psychiatric disorders emerge at very predictable times in development.

ADHD occurs between the ages of 4 and 7.

Children with anxiety disorders present between the ages of 6 and 12, and children first present with depressive disorders in mid-adolescence.

The role of the family in the face of a diagnosis of ADHD 2:18

Therefore, if you have a family history of ADHD, you should look for symptoms of ADHD in your 3, 4, and 5-year-olds.

If you have an anxiety disorder in your family history, you should look for symptoms of anxiety between the ages of 6 and 12, and similarly for depression.

Share this information with your pediatrician.

Your pediatrician knows how these symptoms present themselves so you can be aware of them very soon.

CNN: Are you saying not to wait for a symptom profile to come up in your child?

Be proactive?

Walkup:

That's right.

If you have a family history of ADHD and you have a 2 or 3 year old, you have to get really good at parenting, because these kids are hard to raise.

If you have a family history of an anxiety disorder, Mom and Dad need to make sure they're both in good emotional shape.

They will have to become fearless because we know that the treatment of anxiety is to take on those things that are scary or challenging.

We also know that for families with a strong history of depression, the best behavioral treatment is to be physically active and actively engage with the world.

If you know the family history, you know the risk of age of onset, you know what things can be done to mitigate that risk once the disease arises.

Your child will be in much better shape and easier to treat if all of that work was done before the symptoms really manifested.

CNN: What can parents or caregivers do now to help their children mitigate any emotional difficulties stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic?

Walkup:

Take a hard look at your family history and don't attribute all symptoms to covid.

If you have a strong family history and you see symptoms in your child, don't rule it out.

Take it seriously.

Find out, read and talk to your pediatrician, because they know about these conditions.

They will begin to lay the groundwork for intervention.

If you don't need to intervene now, it's much better to lay the groundwork and be prepared than to be caught off guard by an illness later.

Families often hire a financial advisor or legal advisor.

Why not have a mental health counselor if you have a family history of a psychiatric disorder?

Have that mental health consultant work with you early on around prevention and early intervention.

By starting to address these conditions early, you can minimize the impact.

If you don't, you risk maximum impact on long-term results.

CNN: Are you hopeful for the future about the mental and emotional well-being of children?

Walkup:

I think we have great treatments, and if we can get the kids to treatment, we're going to be fine.

In this country there is a great "anti-treatment" sentiment and a great ignorance of the mental health pandemic.

We don't take it seriously enough, so I have mixed feelings.

If we get the children to receive attention, we do very well with them.

They respond well and improve.

On the other hand, families today have to overcome many obstacles to receive care.

This can make it hard for children to get the care they need.

Overall, we will see a huge decrease in the burden of children's mental health simply because parents and guardians will figure out how to get ahead of emotional difficulties.

That parental leadership within a family can mitigate a lot of suffering.

AdolescentsMental HealthMental disorders

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-06-03

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