COVID IS crushing our children, or so we read. “Exams limbo has sent anxiety soaring,” goes one headline. Or: “Lockdown causes mental health problems for one in six youngsters.” But often the words “likely” or “probable” are to be found in such reports. So pupils are “likely” to develop a mental health condition. Or children will “probably” meet criteria for a mental health problem and need clinical intervention” in the future.
In fact, the true state of our children’s mental health through the pandemic is much harder to discern. One reason, as the The Lancet Psychiatry acknowledged last month, is that “few studies around the world cover children”: most evidence of the effect of Covid is about adult mental health.
18 February 2021, The Tablet
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