According to a new report released Monday by the Child Mind Institute, at least 55 percent of children felt sad, depressed or not their usual chirpy selves following post Covid 19 pandemic days, compared to 25 percent of adults.
As researchers seek to tease out the pandemic’s potential long-term impacts on the new generation’s mental health and developmental skills, the data provides a glimpse into the disparities in children’s early psychological responses.
Although researches conducted previously has linked a traumatic incident on a population, such as a natural disaster, to poor mental health in the years following, the study claims that COVID-19 is an exceptional worldwide phenomenon, which affected practically everyone in some way, including children.
According to the survey, around 70 percent of both children and adults felt some level of mental distress, which manifested as loneliness, irritation or fidgetiness.
People who lived in urban areas and regions where outbreaks were severe, generally, experienced much higher levels of anxiety and depression, along with people who were related to health care workers.
Children from financially unstable homes or those who were facing food insecurity at the time of the study had poorer mental health outcomes than those from more financially stable homes. About a third of teenagers say that they have access to mental health resources but don’t use them, while 22 percent of them say that they don’t have any at all.
Those who were vulnerable to mental illness, food insecurity, and housing instability prior to the epidemic are still at risk, the study concluded.
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