Children’s mental health is an unseen, yet very real casualty of the coronavirus

School closings due to COVID-19 have been a tragedy for all sorts of reasons, aside from the obvious potential for children to fall behind academically. No school means after-school activities, from sports to drama club, have been cancelled, too. More critically, some kids may go hungry without access to school breakfast and lunch programs. And this summer? No summer camp, no little league, no time spent just hanging out with friends. Add all this to the fact that millions of parents have lost their jobs and the stability they provided, and you can see that children are being buffeted from every direction.

The result of all this? For many children it’s stress, anxiety, loneliness, depression and other challenges to their mental health.  

None of these conditions are new to America’s children. A 2019 study from JAMA Pediatrics noted that 16.5% of children between 6 and 17 in the U.S. – about 7.7 million – live with at least one treatable mental health disorder. In other words, even before the current pandemic, mental health in children was already a huge issue facing society.  

While children do not seem to be as susceptible to COVID-19 as adults, the pandemic may be harming them anyhow – exacerbating mental health issues in ways we don’t yet understand and to an extent that could haunt us for generations to come.

Kids who had been attending school outside their home no longer have the same structure to their days – the routines that can make them feel safe and secure or the continual challenges school gives them that allow them to develop and mature. In their place may be too much screen time, not enough physical activity, irregular sleep patterns and loss of milestones like graduation ceremonies, prom and even learning to drive. They’ll also experience less interaction with friends, family members, teachers and other adults in their lives, which could result in hopelessness, boredom and frustration. Ironically, though parents may be home more often now, busily working or anxiously under-employed, children may actually be receiving less attention from them at a time when they need more.

It’s also true that while children may not be following the news closely or the ups and downs of their parents’ employment, they naturally pick up on the stress and fear among the adults in their lives. As Rachel Herbst, who leads integrated behavioral health services in primary care at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, recently told nationalgeograpgic.com, “anxiety is far more contagious than any virus, and kids are going to soak that up.”

As with anything related to mental health, there is no easy answer. Every child is different, processing this experience in his or her own way. In addition, young children, tweens and teens are at very different places in their development and will have their own issues related to that. Finally, every family is unique, and most parents are learning as they go along, trying to balance caring for their families and all their additional responsibilities with caring for themselves.  

Still, many experts agree that there are steps parents can take to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on their children’s mental health. Among them:

• Be there. As complicated as things may be right now, it’s critical that parents or caregivers are there for their children, in the moment, undistracted and focused. Quality time may sound like a cliché, but it still matters.
• Create routines. Children like consistency. It makes them feel safe and secure, sets expectations, establishes healthy habits and more. Right now, this may be one of the more important dynamics parents can achieve with their kids: A new normal that works for them.
• Tell it like it is. Without overloading children with information they can’t understand, help relieve some of their anxiety by having a dialogue with them about what’s happening out in the world as well as in their own house.
• Go outside. Within the bounds of your state’s sheltering-in-place orders, give your kids as much opportunity as possible to spend time outdoors for exercise and play.
• Make screen time count. As a paper published in March by the American Academy of Pediatrics noted, it’s not so much the amount of time children spend online as much as it is how they spend that time. School, staying connected to friends, pursuing extracurricular interests, even gaming – help your kids use their time online wisely. 

And, finally, practice patience. After all, it’s tough being a kid even under the best of circumstances.