Children's Mental Health Has Suffered During Covid

I remember thinking last year that we were letting down people at both ends of their lives – when deaths in care homes were spiralling out of control and our children were suffering from lost school time and separation from their friends.

- Dr Miriam Stoppard

We grappled with deaths in the aged but somehow we failed our children by not giving them a high enough priority and now they’re showing serious signs of our neglect.

Even as the pandemic abates we’re still not singling them out for special consideration, although their needs are great, particularly in the realm of mental health.

The mental health of our children and young people was deteriorating before the pandemic, points out Professor Tamsin Ford of Cambridge University and colleagues in the BMJ. Between 2004 and 2017, anxiety, depression and self-harm increased, particularly among teenage girls.