B.C. Children’s Representative: Review on Child Mental Health Issues
Jennifer Charlesworth, B.C.’s children’s representative, is quoted, “Going forward, we would be very wise to invest significantly more in mental health, ‘given the pre-pandemic shortfalls and the benefits over time.”
Dr. Waddell, a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry, who led the review, noted, “The studies that we examined really strongly predict that we’re going to see significant increases in the number of kids with anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression and behaviour challenges.
The review evaluated 60 articles published in the past 70 years. One 2009 study, focused on children’s mental health in parts of North America affected by SARS, showed that 30% of children who had been quarantined exceeded the clinical threshold for post-traumatic stress symptoms, compared with 1.1% of children who did not isolate. This was particularly significant amongst those children whose parents met or exceeded the same post-traumatic stress threshold. Dr. Waddell notes that, whilst clinicians know how to effectively treat and prevent such challenges, children and their parents were already facing a stark shortfall in mental-health supports before the COVID-19 pandemic began, so a massive scaling up will be required.
Dr. Waddell expressed particular concern that children aren’t forgotten amongst the competing demands for resources. She said, “If we don’t address this, we are really talking about what will happen to our next generation of Canadian nurses and teachers and front-line workers of all types and we cannot turn away from this. We cannot afford not to address this, to really keep the kids in the foreground.”