Will the children be okay? As the pandemic spread, there was optimism that kids and teenagers would “bounce back,” but tragically, the evidence point to the opposite.
Twenty-five percent of kids and teenagers said they have suffered from severe depression. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the incidence and hospitalization rates for newly diagnosed eating disorders soared by 60%.
Children and teenagers have seen a sharp increase in the pandemic’s predictors of mental illness. Screen time rose by 50%, physical activity dropped by 20%, loneliness and family violence worsened, and anxiety and sadness among parents more than doubled.
Many of the experiences and opportunities that help children and teens build identity, friendships, supports and personal growth were also stripped away during the pandemic.
Suicide attempts are a regrettable but frequently employed marker of the mental health of children and adolescents. The question of whether suicide attempts among children and adolescents rose during the pandemic or were within historical averages has come up frequently.
Our research team conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the literature on 11.1 million emergency department visits among children and adolescents across 18 nations, which was then published in Lancet Psychiatry.In our study, we compared the rate of children’s and adolescents’ emergency department visits for suicide attempts that occurred before the pandemic, to the rate that occurred during the pandemic. In doing so, we provide the most rigorous test to date of whether the number of children and adolescents presenting to the emergency department for suicide attempts has increased, decreased or stayed the same during the pandemic.
We found that the rate of suicide attempts for children and adolescents increased by 22 per cent during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic. Specifically, we found that on average, in any given emergency department setting, there were 102 child and adolescent visits per month for suicide attempts before the pandemic, which increased to 125 during the months of the pandemic.
The pandemic has been difficult for many, and the results of our study highlight just how difficult, and potentially fatal, it has been for children and adolescents.
