University of California San Francisco’s COVID response director fears strict protocols in reopened schools will continue mental health problems in children.
COVID-19 policies had disastrous results on children, especially in California, according to medical researchers at the University of California San Francisco.
Jeanne Noble, director of COVID response in the UCSF emergency department, is finishing an academic manuscript on the mental health toll on kids from lockdown policies. She shared a presentation on its major points with Just the News.
Suicides in the Golden State last year jumped by 24% for Californians under 18 but fell by 11% for adults, showing how children were uniquely affected by “profound social isolation and loss of essential social supports traditionally provided by in-person school,” the presentation says.
Children requiring emergency mental health services jumped last year in Children’s Hospital of Oakland, and children’s hospitalizations for eating disorders more than doubled at UCSF Children’s Hospital. In January, the latter’s emergency department (ED) at Mission Bay hit a record for “highest proportion of suicidal children in ER” at 21%.
Noble and her manuscript coauthors previewed their findings and conclusions in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month. They accused the CDC of burying the harms to teen mental health from lockdown while cherry-picking data to cast teen COVID hospitalizations “in the worst possible light.”
The “lessons are national” from California’s lockdown policies, which resulted in the longest school closures and highest number of kids out of school, Noble said in a phone interview. “There’s evidence of similar trends elsewhere,” such as Colorado.
Noble shared an email from the director of a Texas summer camp who predicted a “perfect storm … of anger and frustration” headed for schools this fall, based on the experience of the camp this summer.
The kids’ interpersonal skills have “atrophied” over 18 months in “cloistered” communities. “The shy children are more shy, the anxious kids more anxious, the angry ones are more angry,” the director wrote. “Children that tend to miss social cues are missing more of them.”
At camps across the country, directors are observing “more mental health struggles than we would expect in 5-10 summers” among the counselors — college students who were also deprived of social interactions and limited to virtual classrooms. Both new staff and “stalwarts” are quitting due to mental health problems, according to the director.
‘Worse for kids than the numbers themselves’
Noble’s presentation also highlights lesser known CDC data on national trends. ED mental health visits jumped 24% for children 5-11 and 31% for those 12-17 in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
The change is even more starkly illustrated when contrasting insurance claims for mental health versus all medical claims for children 13-18: The former jumped more than the latter fell in 2020 compared to 2019, particularly early in the pandemic.
Girls have suffered more than boys. ED visits for suspected suicide attempts jumped a whopping 51% among 12-17 year old girls in February and March 2021 compared to the same period in 2019.
Noble said girls even pre-COVID were more active on social media and more likely to suffer from suicidality. They are also slightly younger when they start having mental health problems. She wants to see more research on whether differences in extracurriculars between the sexes plays a role.
Researchers expected to see a drop in emergency visits for mental health in 2020 due to fear of COVID infection and fewer child interactions outside the house, according to Noble. “Things have been even worse for kids than the numbers themselves describe,” she said.
The researcher theorizes that interaction through screens is “more foreign and likely unfulfilling from a socialization standpoint” for kids, especially K-3, because most of their waking hours were spent at school. Some who were actively engaged in the classroom “just stopped completely” on Zoom, Noble said, citing her own 12-year-old’s difficulties.
Given that the quantitative burden of the pandemic largely fell on adults, who got sick, lost jobs and suffered financially, researchers expected their mental health problems would have “dwarfed” those of kids, who feel these challenges “in an attenuated form,” Noble said. Instead it was the opposite, and Noble thinks “prolonged social lockdown” is the likeliest factor.
“Sacrificing the development and well being of our children for enhanced infection control was scientifically unnecessary and ethically unsound,” the presentation concludes.
