A lost generation? The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health of young people.
With this new ZonMw-funded study (number 4), we will continue the systematic data collection we set up earlier. We will focus on parental stress in relation to COVID measures and potential trauma in children, for which we will conduct retrospective focus group interviews with parents and children. Lastly, we will examine the impact of digital (as opposed to face-to-face) therapeutic contacts on diagnoses and treatment in mental health care for children and adolescents.
Goal
- Investigate whether the increase in mental health issues from 2020 to 2023, as observed in our data, persists, increases, or decreases.
- Gain more insight into the effects of specific pandemic measures on the mental health of children, adolescents, and their parents.
- Investigate the impact of the shift to teletherapy, introduced during the pandemic to maintain child and adolescent psychiatric care.
Approach
- We will continue collecting data on well-being, internalizing and externalizing problems, and parental stress as reported by both parents and children themselves.
- a) We will use longitudinal trajectory analysis on data about parental stress and mental health problems of children between 2020 and 2023.
b) We will conduct focus group interviews and individual semi-structured interviews with groups of parents and children.
c) We will collect data on trauma-related mental health issues linked to COVID-19. - We will use patient records from clinical child populations (2015-2024) to investigate changes in diagnosis, treatment duration, treatment intensity, dropout rates, and medication prescriptions.
Collaboration partners
These studies are conducted under the umbrella of our consortium "COVID-19 Wellbeing and Mental Health Consortium." The consortium consists of about 30 professionals from 14 Dutch organizations, ranging from institutions like the Netherlands Youth Institute and Trimbos, to universities, UMCs, and academic institutions for child and adolescent psychiatry (Amsterdam, Leiden, Nijmegen, Groningen). We have been working together as a consortium for nearly 4 years, resulting in various (inter)national publications, a working conference (May 2022), and a report (May 2023) summarizing all Dutch research on the mental health of children and adolescents.
(Expected) Results
- Insight into whether the prevalence of mental health issues observed in April 2023 continues, increases, or decreases in child and adolescent populations.
- Insight into:
a) The various trajectories of mental health among children during the pandemic and identification of risk groups based on parental stress and socioeconomic factors.
b) The impact of pandemic measures and their possible long-term effects on child and parental mental health.
c) The influence of specific pandemic measures that may have caused trauma and improvement of trauma-informed care. - Insight into the impact of providing digital mental health care (teletherapy) during the pandemic.