The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Children and Young People’s Mental Health

Chair: Dr. Praveetha Patalay, Professor of Population Health and Wellbeing, Centre for Longitudinal Studies and MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, UCL

Talk abstracts

Dr Rosie Mansfield:  Dr Rosie Mansfield will present results from a study that made use of a naturally occurring experiment within two ongoing school-based trials, with the aim of overcoming existing limitations of research (e.g., a lack of pre- pandemic, national-level data, and a comparable control group) and providing robust causal evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health. The COVID-19 pandemic led to increased adolescent depressive symptoms and decreased life satisfaction. However, there was no overall effect of the pandemic on externalising difficulties. By analysing two groups of adolescents assessed across two years and controlling for several relevant school and pupil characteristics, the current study was better able to isolate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health from age and longer-term trends than previous studies.

Dr Lee Hudson: Dr Hudson will first provide a background to what we know from the literature about how children and young people’s mental health has been affected during the pandemic, as well as potential mechanisms. He will also present data from the Youcope study, for which he was an investigator, which sought to understand more about how young people aged 16-24 in the UK were impacted by the pandemic. This was an online study that comprised of an initial web-based 20-minute survey, followed by subsequent on-line surveys asking questions about life, health and wellbeing, and daily activities. Dr Hudson will present data on how health care was disrupted and also impact on mental health. Data is still be analysed from an app for participant’s phones and experiences of developing an app in partnership with industry during the pandemic will also be shared.

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