On the 31st of March 2022, the Department for Education released a report which documented the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of teenagers. It found that the pandemic had led to increased depressive symptoms in adolescents, and that girls were more affected than boys.
The APPG on A Fit and Healthy Childhood welcomes this report. It is an important first step towards understanding the full impact of the pandemic on teenagers. However, further action must now be taken to safeguard the mental health of the COVID-generation.
This DfE report is based on a current study from the Education for Wellbeing Programme; in particular two trials which are funded by the Department for Education (DfE). The study is one of the largest school-based trials in the UK with 11,450 pupils from 178 schools participating.
The trials were conducted over two phases. In the first, 6,419 pupils were recruited in 2018 and were monitored for a full academic year.
A second phase recruited 5,031 pupils in the 2019 school year which coincided with the pandemic. Therefore, researchers could compare the results of the two phases (using the first as a control group) and measure the impact of the pandemic upon those teenagers who were taking part.
The complete study results are yet to be peer-reviewed or published so the findings and conclusions can only be interpreted with caution. However, the findings so far give cause for concern.
As predicted in 2021 by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on A Fit and Healthy Childhood, the pandemic had a major impact on the wellbeing of young people.
Those in the second group of the study, whose academic year was affected by the school closures across the pandemic, showed higher levels of depressive symptoms and lower life satisfaction scores compared to the pre-pandemic control group. However, these were not the same individuals answering questions pre and post-pandemic.
Further research needs to address how and whether the pandemic has had long term effects on adolescent wellbeing and mental health needs.
How have other factors affected young people’s responses to the pandemic? Socio-economic factors, family situation and pre-existing mental and physical health all contribute to resilience when faced with stressors.
So far, this DfE report has not addressed these aspects.
“My first thought is that this is a neat natural experiment with important and worrying findings – the authors are quite correct that this natural experiment would differentiate between developmental and Covid-related changes in psychopathology, and for that reason this is important work.”
says Professor Tamsin Ford; specialist in children and young people’s mental health and a contributor to the 2021 APPG paper: The COVID Generation: A Mental health pandemic in the making.
“I look forward to seeing the fuller peer-reviewed report which will contain important details not covered in the current summary, although it was good that the authors linked to their pre-registered protocol, which provided more details about the analysis. But we still lack any information to judge how representative the schools [Included in the trials] were of schools in England and how representative pupils who participated were compared to those who did not, or if there were many pupils lost to follow up.”
The DfE report details the policy implications of the trial findings; in particular the importance of prioritising mental health support for school-aged children.
It states:
“This will require significant focus of resources and activity through a comprehensive public health approach that builds capacity within and between sectors to promote this population’s mental health and provide both early help in school and community settings alongside targeted support.”
Again, this echoes the argument of the APPG on A Fit and Healthy Childhood who, in 2021, called for the creation of a cross-national mental health strategy, ring-fenced funding for children and young people’s mental health services and a radical expansion of mental health research.
Lea Milligan, CEO of MQ Mental Health Research said: “This report does a great job of confirming what was predicted by many, that the impact of the pandemic on adolescent mental health has been vast.
But documenting decline isn’t enough. We must be looking for solutions. As spending pressures mean that services and resources are squeezed, it’s important that we find better routes to wellness for the people impacted. More effective treatments, faster diagnosis and improvements to the methods of support are what’s needed most.”
Professor Kathryn Abel, Director of the Centre for Women’s Mental Health at Manchester University and a member of the APPG, is currently running a new study called En-CAMHS which is working to improve referral processes for Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services. She added:
“Schools-based study is important and exploiting this natural experiment potentially can add vital information about mental health risk and resilience. However, we should be cautious in how we understand these pre-publication findings because, as the authors declare, there was relatively poor uptake amongst pupils and significant loss to follow up, meaning findings may be biased and may not represent adequately the picture we see from more representative population-based samples.”
“In this context, however, we are seeing unprecedented demands on young people’s mental health services. This is creating enormous problems for specialist services such as CAMHS who manage enduring, severe and complex mental illness. Our post-pandemic recovery plans should, therefore, include creative solutions to broader needs among young people. For example, the En-CAMHS study is addressing how young people best access the most appropriate care pathways. In particular, we need to ensure young people and the families in which they live can access support at the time of need. Such approaches are more likely to build resilience for this, and future, generations.”
One thing is clear: further action is vital in order to better support teenagers’ health.
- More funding must be provided, strategically deployed and ring fenced, so that children and young people’s mental health can be better supported.
- All four nations can benefit from sharing best practice and developing national, standardised approaches to deliver accessible support at lower thresholds.
- More funding must be provided for solutions-focused research so that we can improve support for people before they reach crisis.
Helen Clark, Lead Author for the All Party Parliamentary Group on A Fit and Healthy Childhood said:
“The DfE report is a valuable acknowledgement that there is an urgent crisis when it comes to the mental health of young people – but there is a limit to the number of times that policymakers can (or should) say ‘Something must be done.’
“There is no shortage of eminent voices elucidating the problem but to date, the solutions are piecemeal; frequently the subject of trial or pilot and often restricted to specific geographical cohorts.
Unless and until Government is prepared to allocate the funding needed for research; the resources to ensure that provision is available for all children and young people in school and the community at an early intervention stage before the need for CAMHS and clinical intervention, we will be at risk of a mental health pandemic.
The APPG welcomes the DfE report policy recommendations as a FIRST step. They cannot be the LAST. “
