Sounding the Alarm for Children’s Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Increasingly, research confirms the negative effects of COVID-19 safety measures on the mental health of children and adolescents. Saunders and colleagues call for an urgent response to the increasing sustained demand for mental health services inclusive of substance use and developmental disorders. The authors’ population-based cross-sectional study used linked administrative and health data to examine changes in utilization of physician-provided mental health services for 2.5 million children and adolescents aged 3 to 17 years in Ontario, Canada. From March 2020 through February 2021, the authors found a rapid and sustained 10% increase in outpatient mental health service utilization by children and adolescents compared with prior rates. Similar trends were not observed for acute mental health service utilization for the same period, except for girls. The current study found striking sex differences with substantially higher rates of utilization observed for acute inpatient psychiatric hospitalization and outpatient mental health services for school-aged and adolescent girls.