Cases of kids with severe mental health issues soared during pandemic

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Cases of children suffering severe mental health issues soared during lockdown - particularly among girls, reveals new research.

The study showed that during the pandemic pediatric emergency departments in the United States saw more youngsters and teenagers who needed a psychiatric admission.

There was also an increase in severe conditions including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and substance abuse, according to the findings published in Academic Emergency Medicine.

The higher demand for psychiatric inpatient beds often exceeded availability, resulting in over 12-hour stays in the emergency department (ED) awaiting admission for nearly 20 percent of children in 2022, up from seven percent before the pandemic.

Lead author Jennifer Hoffmann said: “Our data shows that pediatric emergency departments saw more severe mental health presentations during the pandemic, even while the actual number of visits decreased in 2022.

“The dramatic increase in prolonged ED stays attests to the strain on the system and difficulties finding appropriate psychiatric care for children, whether in the hospital or in the community.”

Dr. Hoffmann, emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and her colleagues studied mental health ED visits by children aged five to 17 at nine American hospitals.

They split the figures into three different periods: pre-pandemic (January 2017 - February 2020), early pandemic (March 2020 - December 2020), mid pandemic (2021) and late pandemic (2022).

As well as the increased severity of mental health emergencies, the research team also found that during the mid and late pandemic, mental health ED visits increased beyond expected rates among girls, but not boys.

Dr. Hoffmann, who is also an Assistant Professor of Paediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, added: “We observed a unique vulnerability for girls during the pandemic, which indicates that girls’ mental health requires more attention."