Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This paper includes a mixed methods content analysis of a parenting Facebook group focused on COVID-19. It analyze participants' posts to identify the types of support parents sought and gave. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in increased parental stress and challenges related to children's development. Many families turned to social media as a source of information and social support. This study analyzed 1,180 posts from a large, closed Facebook group focused on parenting during COVID-19. It coded posts using a modified version of social support theory and supplemented this analysis with codes related to giving and receiving support, post format, and topic.

The authors aimed to evaluate changes in use of government-subsidized primary mental health services, through the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), by young people during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia and whether changes were associated with age, sex, socioeconomic status, and residence in particular geographical areas. Interrupted time-series analyses were conducted by using quarterly mental health MBS service data (all young people ages 12–25 years, 2015–2020) for individual Statistical Area Level 3 areas across Australia. The data captured >22.4 million service records. Meta-analysis and meta-regression models estimated the pandemic interruption effect at the national level and delineated factors influencing these estimates.

This study examined telepsychiatry use among children enrolled in Medicaid before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. A retrospective analysis was conducted of claims data from the Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System for children (ages 3–17) with any mental health service use in 2019 (N=5,606,555) and 2020 (N=5,094,446).

The COVID-19 pandemic led to many adverse mental health consequences from the lockdown. It caused an exacerbation of depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders. Among the affected populations, high school students were one of the most commonly affected groups. This study is aimed to assess the psychological impact as well as the prevalence of depression and anxiety levels among high school female students during the COVID-19 outbreak in Medina, Saudi Arabia. This is a cross-sectional study that was conducted on a total of 300 high-school female students in Medina, Saudi Arabia between April 2021 and June 2021. Data were collected via an online survey to measure depression and anxiety using the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 (GAD-7) questionnaires, respectively.

Psychosocial factors determining the use of psychoactive substances by adolescents have been identified in numerous empirical studies conducted over the past few decades. Specific features of the peer environment like contacts with substance users, prevalence of use in the peer environment or experiencing direct peer pressure towards substance use are indicated to be of particular importance. Features of the family environment, particularly parental support and control and features of the school environment like school bonding are important. Numerous studies have shown that the group of strongest factors include subjective norms and normative beliefs about use, expectations about the effects of alcohol and individual, temperamental and personality characteristics, such as sensation-seeking, impulsivity, self-control and sense of coherence. The Mokotów study presented in this paper, while primarily focused on monitoring changes in the prevalence of risk behaviours and other mental health problems also takes into account the possibility of analysing, as described above, the many strong determinants of various problems in the study population of adolescents.

The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and couples’ relationships may be particularly higher in vulnerable groups, including mothers and fathers during the transition to parenthood. This study compared mental health symptoms and couples’ relationship quality among parents who were at 6 months postpartum before or during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 109 primiparous mothers and fathers recruited before the COVID-19 pandemic were assessed at 6 months postpartum, before (n = 69) or during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 40). Participants completed self-reported measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms, and couples’ positive and negative interactions

Studies in recent years and especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic have shown a significant increase in the problematic use of computer games and social media. Adolescents having difficulties in regulating their unpleasant emotions are especially prone to Problematic Internet Use (PIU), which is why emotion dysregulation has been considered a risk factor for PIU. The aim of the present study was to assess problematic internet use (PIU) in adolescents after the third wave (nearly 1.5 years after the onset in Europe) of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the German region of Siegen-Wittgenstein, all students 12 years and older from secondary-level schools, vocational schools and universities were offered a prioritized vaccination in August 2021 with an approved vaccine against COVID-19. In this context, the participants filled out the Short Compulsive Internet Use Scale (SCIUS) and two additional items to capture a possible change in digital media usage time and regulation of negative affect due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A multiple regression analysis was performed to identify predictors of PIU. The original sample consisted of 1477 participants, and after excluding invalid cases the final sample size amounted to 1268 adolescents aged 12–17 (x = 14.37 years, SD = 1.64). The average prevalence of PIU was 43.69%. Gender, age, digital media usage time and the intensity of negative emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic were all found to be significant predictors of PIU: female gender, increasing age, longer digital media usage time and higher intensity of negative emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with higher SCIUS total scores.

Adolescence is characterized as a period of great physical, psychological, social, and behavioral challenges which often impacts on the mental health of adolescents. Prior research has demonstrated the mental health of adolescents to be further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in isolation during the strictest lockdown period. As such, the primary purpose of this study was to identify the difficulties of South African adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected through a questionnaire completed by 4230 grade 4 to 12 learners from two provinces in South Africa (Mpumalanga, North-West) and analyzed with chi-square, Cramer’s V, Bayesian, and the odds ratio tests. Participants self-reported on the difficulties they experienced during the strictest part of the COVID-19 lockdown period which could possibly impact on their mental health.

As part of the “Circuit-breaker” social distancing measure to address COVID-19, the government of Singapore closed schools and workplaces from April to May 2020. Although this helped reduce transmission rates, for working parents, this period had been a challenging experience of working from home while providing care for children full-time. Problems in the work-home interface can have a significant impact on parenting and marital harmony. This study analyzed data from 201 married and employed parents in Singapore using online surveys. Latent profile analysis was used to identify profiles of parents’ work–family balance (WFB) and spousal and employer support. Linear regression was used to examine links between profiles with parenting stress and marital conflicts.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a worldwide event that has caused significant changes in the daily lives of individuals and families. The combined effect of the pandemic and the stress associated with major life cycle changes, such as the transition to parenthood, is yet to be understood. The aim of the current study was to validate the Portuguese version of the recently developed COVID-19 Household Environment Scale (CHES) and examine its psychometric properties in a sample of mothers who had given birth during the pandemic. The CHES is a self-report measure assessing the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in household cohesion and conflict and includes two sections. Section 1 contains 25 descriptive items pertaining to sociodemographic and household characteristics and COVID-19 stressors. Section 2 encompasses household cohesion and conflict, assessing any change in household experiences and activities following the onset of social distancing. The participants consisted of 342 mothers, aged between 19 and 50 years (M = 31.43; SD = 4.38). A confirmatory factor analysis supported the original CHES bifactor structure of household cohesion and conflict, which obtained an acceptable fit (CFI = 0.900, RMSEA = 0.065). Correlations between household cohesion and conflict and family cohesion and dyadic coping contributed to developing the construct validity of this scale.

This study aimed to assess physical and mental health, and health-related quality of life (HRQL) parameters in adolescents with physical disabilities enrolled in a sports nongovernmental organization (NGO) versus adolescents without disabilities during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This cross-sectional study included 30 adolescents with disabilities and 86 adolescents without disabilities who responded to an online questionnaire with sociodemographic data and self-rated healthcare routine information during the COVID-19 quarantine. Validated self-report versions of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 (PedsQL 4.0), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and Pediatric Outcome Data Collection Instrument (PODCI) were also applied.

Although the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health has received sufficient attention in the medical and public health fields, analysis from the social science perspective is still lacking. By regarding the shock of COVID-19 pandemic as a quasi-natural experiment, this study adopts the Difference-in-Differences (DID) model and large microdata from Shandong Province, China, to identify the causal effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of senior high school students.