Youth Mental Health Crisis Deepening Due to Pandemic Policies: Study

We're joined by Professor Carl Hennegan, Director of the Center of Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford. He's also on the Scientific Advisory Board for Collateral Global, a group dedicated to understanding the collateral impacts of pandemic policies. Thank you for joining us. You're welcome. I wanted to have you on because I read two reports recently, yours published in October for Collateral Global, which examines the impact of the pandemic restrictions on childhood mental health. That's the title of it. And the other is an advisory that was just published by the U.S. Surgeon General, Youth Mental Health Crisis Further Exposed by COVID-19 Pandemic. I wanted to get your reaction. The two reports are actually quite different in how they describe the problems that children are facing. Well, look, I think there's been a growing body of evidence that showed mental health problems in children and adolescents has been a growing concern. Around about a third of all adolescents report some problems with mental health, anxiety and depression, and it's worse in females than males. And I think that's important. And another important point is to say that about half of all mental health problems are apparent in adolescents. So actually those early times, so when we're young in our teenage years, are incredibly important in terms of what happens next as we go into adulthood. So they're already an at-risk group. The problem with the surgeon's report, it doesn't then say, well, they're already at risk. So the pandemic, all of these issues that occurred, how did that add to the problems? And if you look at the evidence throughout the pandemic, what it shows is about eight out of every 10 children and adolescents report that they had some behavior or psychological problems that got worse. So the key is, and what this surgeon's report doesn't say, is we had a very high-risk group to start with, and then we introduced a number of issues that actually disproportionately affected children and worsened the problem. Okay, so I want to get to what some of the big take-homes from your report are, what are the biggest problems. But first, could you just explain to us, it's quite a unique report, because you looked at a very vast body of evidence to draw your conclusions. So can you first give us a sense of the scope, and then let us know what your top findings were? Yeah, so one of the key aspects of what we do in the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine is try and be systematic, to do systematic reviews, so we don't cherry-pick little bits of evidence. And we go and look across the whole scope of the evidence base that was published in the COVID outbreak. And there has actually been a huge amount of literature, somewhere in excess of 200,000 publications published in the last 20 months, huge amount that we can go and look at. And in there, there are already systematic reviews, global reports that we take all of them and say, what's the message? Are they different from each other? Or is there a consistent message that they're putting out there? And what you see is across the globe, this is a global phenomenon, is much the same message. Issues like intervening lights, closing schools has a psychological impact. The messaging, the fear we instill into children because of the messaging that's gone around COVID, consistently led to worsening of the psychological problems. Now, the other thing that it also shows is that there are two important areas that actually you can intervene with that can change potentially the course of what happens next for our younger adolescents and children. They are social connectedness, that actually being able to connect was really important as a protective behavior, which often is completely against what we're doing in lockdown and restrictions. We're saying all stay apart. The second issue was also what we call pro-social behaviors. It's almost like we're hardwired to do positive things for each other. And in doing that, simple things like opening the door for somebody can make you feel better about yourself. So one of the keys is again about lockdowns and restrictions is it prevents us from doing the normal things that are protective. We help other people and that makes us feel better. Now, some key elements to the evidence. As I've said, girls did worse than boys, slightly, and also adolescents did worse. Those above the age of 12 did worse than those younger than 12. The other feature that was really important was aspects like family communication and all this seems to be protective. These youth are at high risk of mental health problems, but they're not at high risk of COVID itself. So what would you recommend on that front? Because it seems like possibly they're suffering unnecessarily. Yeah, so I think this is an incredibly important point. The first thing is to deescalate any fear and anxiety around COVID for children because there's a distortion in the risk. It's almost like people perceive if they're gonna get COVID and they're in their 14, 15, that actually it's gonna seriously affect them. And actually, the interesting bit about COVID is for children, it's actually a very safe disease. COVID is actually one of those disease that will give rise to an upper respiratory infection and a cough and a cold. Now, there's an important aspect, which is the Children's Convention on Human Rights, which basically says any decisions, particularly from a public body that's made should always put the children's best interest as paramount in the decision-making, not somebody else, the children. So when you decide to intervene, you should be intervening for the children's best interest. That's why I think it's been incredibly important for us to realize shutting areas like schools was a mistake and actually keeping them open is good for the children's education, but it's also good for their social connectedness and wellbeing. So you said that the studies showed that the impact is worse on adolescents, on older kids rather than the younger ones. Can you unpack that a little bit? In what ways are we seeing that? And why is that? Yeah, so generally, that's as if most of the studies looked across the age groups, and particularly anxiety and depression were worse. As you become an adolescent, you're moving into the world, aren't you? You're starting to face some of the issues that come around you, whether it's peers, social pressures, you're formulating, your body's changing. And with that comes a changing emphasis on your mood and behaviors. And as you grow up and move into the world, your psychological wellbeing becomes an issue that you face. Whereas you're much more protected when you're younger because the social bonds and the interactions, and you may not have much more of an awareness of the world around you and the messaging. So I think as we get teenagers, and just anecdotally, somebody who's had girls who've grown up, it's incredibly important, and this is what the evidence says. Communication between parents and children is incredibly important in the development of your wellbeing, your self-esteem, your self-confidence as you go into the world. Put that all together, you can have a child who moves into the world with confidence who can do well. The key, though, is not to panic. And I'm a general practitioner as well as a professor of evidence-based medicine. So when I see children with mental health problems, is not to panic, not to make it worse by concerning yourself, because actually what you need is a slow process of good communication, de-escalation of any issues, and a good parent-family bond. But there are also much evidence that interventions in schools can also make a difference about what we do next. So I think de-escalating much of the anxiety is an incredibly important tool, whether that's in the family or in the school environment, to making sure our children can progress through this pandemic and not come out worse the other side. Be sure to watch the entire episode, now available exclusively at epochtv.com, a new completely censorship-free premium subscription platform brought to you by the Epoch Times. 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