New Research Shows How Bad the Pandemic Has Been for Student Mental Health

From the very first waves of school closures and lockdowns in 2020, the pandemic significantly damaged children’s mental health in ways teachers are still coping with and researchers are still struggling to understand.

A new analysis of research across 11 countries including the United States in the journal JAMA Pediatrics finds widespread anxiety and depression among those 19 and younger in the earliest days of the pandemic, exacerbated by greater screen time and less physical activity, and coupled with fewer adult supports to ensure children stayed out of dangerous situations.

Researchers studied the effects of school closures from the earlier days of school closure, across 36 studies including nearly 80,000 children and adolescents and more than 18,000 parents in 11 countries. The data showed much of this decline came from a lack of school referrals, suggesting that because students were in less day-to-day contact with educators and other adults, signs of abuse or neglect were more likely to go unnoticed.

However, studies found no significant connection between school closures and suicide among young people, at least in the first months of the pandemic.

“These immediate, visible consequences of school closures are harbingers of long-term outcomes, including decreased life expectancy for U.S. schoolchildren,” the doctors wrote.. But he cautioned, “Without transforming student-learning supports, just adding more mental health staff in schools will contribute to the ongoing fragmentation and marginalization of efforts to cope with the increased number of learning, behavior, and emotional problems schools are confronting.”

Many schools structure their academic, social-emotional, and mental health supports using processes such as multi-tiered systems of support or Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, but Adelman said the approaches tend to be too limited to deal with the complex and widespread mental health problems schools have faced during the pandemic.

“Given the relatively small pool of resources available to so many schools and the range of students in need,” he said, “this is a critical time for schools to rethink how they are addressing barriers to learning and teaching and improve their approach to reengaging disconnected students and their families.”