RSS Feed
November 13th, 2020 
Awake Goy scpat says:
Speaking of mind games…
The CDC just released a report yesterday, November 13, of mental health data findings among children under age 18 during the Covid crisis. The data show that beginning exactly when the lockdowns began in March and continuing through end of data collection in October, the proportion of mental health-related emergency department visits increased greatly among this demographic. I have included a link to the report and the passages I found to be important.
Mental Health–Related Emergency Department Visits Among Children Aged <18 Years During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, January 1–October 17, 2020
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a3.htm?s_cid=mm6945a3_w
Published reports suggest that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a negative effect on children’s mental health.
Beginning in week 12 (March 16) the number of mental health–related ED visits among children decreased 43% concurrent with the widespread implementation of COVID-19 mitigation measures; simultaneously, the proportion of mental health–related ED visits increased sharply beginning in mid-March 2020 (week 12) and continued into October (week 42) with increases of 24% among children aged 5–11 years and 31% among adolescents aged 12–17 years, compared with the same period in 2019.
CDC analyzed NSSP ED visit data, which include a subset of hospitals in 47 states representing approximately 73% of U.S. ED visits.
The number of children’s mental health–related ED visits decreased sharply from mid-March 2020 (week 12, March 15–21) through early April (week 15, April 5–11) and then increased steadily through October 2020. (Figure 1). During the same time, the overall proportion of reported children’s ED visits for mental health–related concerns increased and remained higher through the end of the reporting period in 2020 than that in 2019 (Figure 1). The proportion of mental health–related ED visits among children increased 66%…
Many mental disorders commence in childhood, and mental health concerns in these age groups might be exacerbated by stress related to the pandemic and abrupt disruptions to daily life associated with mitigation efforts, including anxiety about illness, social isolation, and interrupted connectedness to school (5).
The definition of mental health focuses on symptoms and conditions (e.g., stress, anxiety) that might increase after a disaster in the United States and might not reflect all mental health–related ED visits. Still, these data likely underestimate the actual number of mental health–related health care visits because many mental health visits occur outside of EDs.
Posted in 
Tags: 
