Children’s mental health crisis declared a ‘national emergency’ as suicides and ER visits skyrocket amid COVID-19 pandemic



With child emergency room visits and suicide incidents skyrocketing in the U.S. amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a coalition of pediatric health organizations issued a declaration this week labeling the declining mental health of America's young people a national emergency.

What are the details?

In the urgent declaration issued Tuesday, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children's Hospital Association warned that children's mental health had reached crisis levels.

The cohort of health professionals noted that the decline of children's mental health had already been a concern for nearly a decade, but that the pandemic severely exacerbated the situation.

"We have witnessed soaring rates of mental health challenges among children, adolescents, and their families over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbating the situation that existed prior to the pandemic," the declaration read.

They noted that "rates of childhood mental health concerns and suicide rose steadily between 2010 and 2020, and by 2018 suicide was the second leading cause of death for youth ages 10-24."

But, they said, "the pandemic has intensified this crisis: across the country, we have witnessed dramatic increases in Emergency Department visits for all mental health emergencies including suspected suicide attempts."

What else?

Citing data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NPR reported that overall, in 2020, "the percentage of emergency department visits for mental health emergencies rose by 24% for children between the ages of 5 and 11 and 31% for those 12 to 17, compared with 2019."

The tragic rise was even sharper for teenage girls, specifically. Over roughly the last year, suspected suicide attempts for girls ages 12 to 17 went up an eye-popping 51% compared with the same period in 2019.

Last year's mental health decline has also disproportionately affected children of color. Research published in Pediatrics this month determined that more than 140,000 kids lost a primary or secondary caregiver to COVID-19 — with a majority of those children being children of color.

Anything else?

In the letter, the health professionals called on policymakers at all levels of government to increase their advocacy for children and adolescents, primarily through increasing federal funding for mental health care and suicide prevention.

"We are caring for young people with soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidality that will have lasting impacts on them, their families, and their communities," the letter stated. "We must identify strategies to meet these challenges through innovation and action, using state, local, and national approaches to improve the access to and quality of care across the continuum of mental health promotion, prevention, and treatment."

Depression has more than tripled since the COVID-19 pandemic



The COVID-19 pandemic has not only taken a toll on the physical well-being of many Americans, but also the mental health, according to a new study. During the coronavirus pandemic, the rate of depression in U.S. adults has more than tripled, a study published in JAMA Network Open found.

There was psychological trauma caused by the COVID-19 lockdowns, social isolation, employment worries, financial concerns, and an unpredictable future. A recent study, led by researchers from Boston University, set out to discover the emotional damage that people encountered during the coronavirus pandemic.

Researchers examined data from a survey of 1,441 U.S. adults conducted from March 31 to April 13. By mid-April, there were over 600,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States, and there were nearly 28,000 coronavirus deaths. Stay-at-home orders were issued in most states at the time, and a record 20.5 million jobs were lost in April.

A pre-pandemic poll of 5,065 respondents in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted from 2017 to 2018, found that 8.5% of Americans showed depression symptoms. During the coronavirus pandemic, that figure skyrocketed to 27.8% of people who said they were experiencing depression symptoms.

Both surveys are based on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, "the most commonly used self-administered depression screening tool," according to The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Women were most likely to have depression symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic, at 33.3%, compared to 21.9% of men. Individuals who were widowed, divorced, or separated had 2.1-fold increased odds of depression symptoms compared to those who were married.

People with a household income of $19,999 or less had 2.4-fold increased odds of depression symptoms. Individuals with household savings less than $5,000 had 1.5-fold increased odds of depression symptoms, according to the paper.

"In 2020, 38.8% of U.S. adults ages 18 to 39 had at least one symptom of depression, up from 9% in the earlier years," according to the Los Angeles Times. "That increase was mirrored among Americans in their 40s and 50s (jumping from 8.5% to 26.8%) and those 60 and above (rising from 7.9% to 14.9%)."

Signs of depression include feeling down or hopeless, loss of interest in things that generally bring joy, lethargy, lack of concentration, or thinking about self-harm, according to Time.

"As an event that can cause physical, emotional, and psychological harm, the COVID-19 pandemic can itself be considered a traumatic event," the authors wrote. "In addition, the policies created to prevent its spread introduced new life stressors and disrupted daily living for most people in the U.S.

"We imagine that as the virus spreads and more cases of COVID-19 are confirmed, so too may mental illness increase among those with COVID-19 and those around them," the authors stated. "This burden is being borne by economically and socially marginalized groups, suggesting that individuals with low income and with fewer resources may benefit from particular policy attention in coming months."

"Post–COVID-19 plans should account for the probable increase in mental illness to come, particularly among at-risk populations," the authors concluded.

"Depression in the general population after prior large scale traumatic events has been observed to, at most, double," said senior study author Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A. Knox professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. Galea cited the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Ebola outbreak, and civil unrest in Hong Kong.

"These findings serve to alert our attention to yet another impending public health crisis as a result of this pandemic — the increase in cases of major depression," Dr. Ruth Shim, an expert on cultural psychology at UC Davis, wrote in the commentary attached to the study.