Covid: What is the mental health cost to the young?

Young people's risk of becoming ill with COVID-19 is tiny - but could the long-term mental health impact of virus restrictions be far more damaging?

A growing number of psychologists, psychiatrists and child health experts believe the needs of the young are being ignored in this pandemic.

Prof Ellen Townsend, an expert in child and adolescent self-harm and suicide from Nottingham University, says the way students are being treated "is massively damaging for their mental health".

"It doesn't make sense to lock up young people," she says. "We have to move past this one disease - a more nuanced approach is needed."

She is not alone - a group of UK academics who work with children and adolescents have set up an online noticeboard collecting scientific evidence that these age groups are being forgotten by policy-makers.

Problems such as self-harm and anxiety were already on the rise before lockdown, particularly among teenagers, with one in eight children and young people estimated to have a mental health condition. There is a lack of hard evidence, but research suggests growing feelings of loneliness and social isolation during the pandemic have had a negative impact.

A study in The Lancet Psychiatry found children's mental health deteriorated most during that period compared with other age groups.

More worrying was the "massive drop-off" in troubled children and teenagers being sent to specialist psychiatrists over several months - from 40 a day to four a day, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Although services stayed open during lockdown, either the message didn't get through or people were too frightened to make contact. The fear is that these young people could now become more seriously ill without the help they need. Eating disorders, which have a high death rate, are a particular concern.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 10 October 2020