Study Finds Covid Lockdowns Hurt Kids Far More Than Officials Were Willing To Admit

Unsurprisingly, children’s mental health plummeted when they were forced to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent study.

Using medical claims data from a large private insurer in California, researchers found that school closures were associated with increased spending on treatments for depression and anxiety among young people ages five to 18, according to the New York Times. During the pandemic, 2.8% of children needed professional help for mental health problems, but shortly after schools reopened, children were 43% less likely to need treatment for mental health problems. (RELATED: ‘No critical thinking’: Parents sound alarm as technology begins to ‘replace the teacher’)

Young girls have been particularly affected by the pandemic, according to the study.

“School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic have disrupted children’s education, socialization and access to mental health resources, raising concerns about long-term effects on [children’s] mental health,” the study says. “In-person learning is an important part of children’s mental health.”

Medical spending and prescriptions dispensed for mental health issues began to decline about four months after schools reopened, falling further after six months, according to the Times. Spending on medications for problems such as depression and anxiety fell 7.5%, and spending on therapy and similar treatments fell 10.6%.

A UNICEF document draws attention to the education emergency amid the COVID-19 pandemic to raise awareness of the need for governments to keep schools open. (Photo by Chris Farber/UNICEF via Getty Images)

For most of the pandemic, discussing the downsides of prolonged school closures has been treated as socially and professionally forbidden. A co-author of the study expressed frustration that people weren’t open to these conversations at the time, saying they “often immediately jumped to very political and hyperpartisan responses.”

“This is definitely a piece of evidence that I wish we had at the beginning of the pandemic to inform the conversations we were having,” Dr. Rita Hamad, a social epidemiologist at Harvard, told the Times. “I think the decisions might have been different if we had seen that the benefits of closing schools were outweighed by risks like this. »

“The hope is really to inform policymaking next time,” Hamad added.

Others are less sure of the correlation. Economist Benjamin Hansen suggested the drop in visits for mental health reasons came from the advent of the Covid vaccine.

“There is a delay that makes me wonder what else they could do,” Dr. Hansen told the Times, adding that “the vaccines have arrived and people have stopped worrying about dying.”

The academic impact of the pandemic on students is already well documented. Even in 2024, fewer than a third of fourth and eighth graders are able to read at a proficient level. A large proportion of students fail to meet even basic criteria in mathematics.

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