Study shows COVID had little impact on mental health. The same isn’t true for kids

A new study found that emergency department visits for suicide attempts among youth across the world increased by 22 per cent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 has taken a minimal toll on most people’s mental health globally, according to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). But a separate study shows that finding may not hold true for children.

In fact, the pandemic increased mental distress for kids, a newly-published study led by the University of Calgary shows, leading to a sharp increase in emergency department visits for attempted suicide and suicide ideation among children and adolescents under the age of 19 years old.

Nicole Racine, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa, said she believes children were forgotten about during the pandemic and they are one of the vulnerable groups that suffered the most from lockdowns.

“They were out of school for long periods of time and there were a lot of closures. And we know that their environments — for many of them who were more vulnerable — were in households, perhaps with increased violence, stress and substance use by parents,” she explained.

Racine is one of the co-authors of the University of Calgary study that was published last week in Lancet Psychiatry, which examined 11 million pediatric emergency department visits across 18 countries between January 2020 and July 2021.

The study found a 22-per cent increase in the number of children and adolescents going to emergency rooms for suicide attempts and an eight-per cent increase in visits for suicide ideation during the pandemic.

This is a stark contrast to the BMJ study also published last week showing the pandemic may not have significantly affected most people’s mental health.

The BMJ study reviewed 137 studies from around the world that measured people’s overall mental health, as well as depression and anxiety levels, before the pandemic and then again during 2020.