When the inevitable analyses of actions taken during the pandemic to mitigate the coronavirus infection are written, they will not be able to ignore the human cost of forcibly keeping us apart due to the mad-scientist social experiment we called a “lockdown.”
The preliminary data is inconclusive. Yes, the lockdown apparently saved some lives. But how many lives were lost or destroyed? How many people’s dreams were dashed? How many families were torn apart, all due to the notion that the disease was worse than lockdown?
These are “costs” of the pandemic also. And in many ways, those costs are more difficult to bear than the dollars and cents that were lost.
No group was hit harder by social isolation than teenagers. These were children trying to cope with an adult crisis and, in many cases, they simply failed. The CDC performed a study on the mental health crisis for teens during the pandemic.
Emergency room (ER) mental health visits increased 31% among children aged 12-17 years old in 2020 compared to the previous year, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report released Friday. The CDC noted that, while it couldn’t definitively establish a cause, it’s likely that pandemic-related restrictions on everyday life could be to blame for the increase.
“Young persons might represent a group at high risk because they might have been particularly affected by mitigation measures, such as physical distancing (including a lack of connectedness to schools, teachers, and peers); barriers to mental health treatment; increases in substance use; and anxiety about family health and economic problems,” the report stated.
