No real mental health crisis from pandemic

[Nimbostratus100]

Confirmed by BMJ, after surveys across high income countries across Europe and ASia

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest, despite a myriad of anecdotal accounts on MN and in some other places.

I know I asked many hundreds of children myself, and found more enjoyed and benefited from lockdown than suffered because of it, and mental health charities knew at the time that suicide rates were falling, which has later been confirmed.

Some people's mental health deteriorated in the lockdowns. Some people's improved. Overall, there was a small rise in mild/moderate mental health problems being reported, while suicides decreased.

Can we stop blaming the pandemic and lockdown for poor mental health across the board now, but particularly in schools.

Our private school was already set up for online teaching and so all students had laptops, so they didn't miss a day. Full online school from day 1. I know some state schools did this also.

I know some state schools did this also
They did indeed...

Confirmed by the BMJ??? Ask anyone who works in MH.
Bullshit

It was more ridiculous when rather than saying you couldn’t travel more than 5 miles, they said you couldn’t cross council boundaries. For some rural councils this meant meant being able to drive up to over two hours/90 miles each way. Cities had boundaries draw tightly around them so kept people within the city, but those in the country areas could also drive into the cities to shop.

There was an amazing fb debacle of the local councillors of the neighbouring ward decreeing that their constituents couldn't go to the country park 1.5 miles away and instead suggested various other parks much further away around the city. They then backtracked to not use those parks and to stick to the local rec, before deleting the post within an hour because they couldn't cope with the backlash of reason and common sense. This was around December 2020.

For mental health, the original lockdown 2020 was the just the warm-up act. The tiers of the autumn caused a lot of confusion and disruption. I never was quite sure whether taking the children to the disease-ridden next county for their swimming lessons was permitted or not under the tiers system, but I'd paid the money and there weren't roadblocks. For me it was the constant changing of what was permitted or not then two months of winter lockdown with sobbing / screaming children and nowhere to go that did the damage, and the slow, slow rate of opening in the spring. I spent most of Jan-Aug 2021 feeling numb with no motivation. It's taken a long time to emotionally feel like me again. I considered going down the AD route with the GP, but didn't because I knew that the real cure was living, socialising and stability.
I lost 3 family members in 2022, two elderly, one I hadn't been able to see since late 2019 due to travel/ hospital/ carehome restrictions and then her absolute frailty by her final months of 2022. Her rapid decline was hastened by lockdown, isolation and loss of routine healthcare (not just a NHS/ British issue). She lost the will to live in the final year. I also lost a cousin in his 30s to suicide. I don't know the extent of restrictions and access to suppport involved.

What I see in children is a huge amount of clinginess. It's now more surprising when Cubs move up from Beavers and happily walk into the room than clinging on to their mums sobbing and chasing after them. In both my youth groups, it's harder to get their attention, hold it and get them to follow simple routine instructions than it was prior to 2020.

Enjoying lockdown doesn't mean that damage wasn't done. DS2 was thoroughly miserable and it took him a long time to rebuild friendships. By Sep 2020, he'd forgotten the names of his classmates and had to relearn it all. DS1 is autistic and coped better, but the reality is that it's not a sustainable way of life; he has to have the social skills to carry out routine interactions. If you don't socialise, there are fun things that just can't be done solo. Some things, you do need external motivation for, few people can live purely on internal motivation. Lockdown gave him unrealistic expectations and broke parental boundaries. Both DCs are the optimal age to play out... they all play in, online and the green spaces are empty in part because as 6-9 year olds that's what they were taught, stay the fuck at home and exist virtually, and no one's let go to play out in safe, green spaces since. It's not the only factor, but the children haven't experienced anything different and don't remember the older, now teenage children playing on the green.

There's a lot wrong in education and health systems anyway, but what prolonged and often unnecessary covid restrictions did was compound all those problems and delay dealing with them and magnify them.

That's pretty naïve isn't it? If you are a pupil at a private school, you're likely to have better facilities and technology at home, more supportive motivated parents, and much smaller class sizes so that the teacher is more able to check how you are doing.

Why are you more likely to have more supportive motivated parents? Money doesn't make someone a better parent

🤣🤣🤣
Bless...

I didn't say that did I?

Smaller class sizes mean the teacher has more time for each child.

And parents paying for an expensive education generally make sure their child is doing the work.

And if your parents are paying for your private education, they are also likely to be wealthy and therefore you won't be sharing devices and running out of bandwidth and fighting for a quiet space to do your school work.

No I am not saying that money makes someone a better parent. Don't put words into my mouth.

Apologies if the word "motivated" offended you. Perhaps that one was the wrong choice.

I used to teach in a tough area. I dread to think how the children I taught would have fared in this situation.

Well my friends child who suffered horrifically certainly wasn't asked nor was any parent at school so how reliable are the figures?

Read the report:
www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj-2022-074224

It's a systematic review rather than a new study, and in the summary conclusions the authors do begin with "High risk of bias in many studies and substantial heterogeneity suggest caution in interpreting results".

The popular news media apply their usual low standards of scientific journalism in reporting these types of study.

Do you only regard studies as reliable if every single person is asked?
Have you read the study yourself so you can answer the question yourself i.e. how many people were asked, and who was in the demographic.

It will take YEARS for significant, peer reviewed findings of any sort to become available.

You need to read the study and then ask your question again.

If someone's suffering from depression, I doubt participating in a survey is going to be top of their to do list. My GP is still encouraging people not to book appointments. If other practices across the country are doing the same thing, it makes you wonder how many are still suffering in silence.

FWIW, I was someone who really enjoyed lockdown and it had a positive impact on my mental health.

From an article about young people in last months Woman and Home.
73,000 young people had mental health counselling sessions with Childline in 2020/21
24, 200 young people had counselling sessions with Childline about suicidal thoughts or feelings in 2020/21
According to mental health charity Young Minds 83% of young people with mental health needs felt the pandemic had made their situations worse.
If anyone thinks this is untrue they can always put a complaint in to these charities i suppose. And take it up with them or W&H

Methinks an own goal here from the BMJ If they wanted to drum up support for the doctors strikes it would have been prudent not to minimize the sacrifices and suffering much of the public went through because of the lockdowns.

www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p588

Yes, it was fantastic.
My 17 year old didn't see another friend his age in months. Stuck in a room from 9-4 trying to force himself to study with hit and miss teachers input.

It was so much fun, he ended up needing an emergency consultation with our gp and counselling for his mental health issues.
It also affected his GCSE grades.

The fun continued with me, his mum, needing antidepressants. In my 50 odd years I've dealt with issues with alcoholic parents, physical abuse, anorexia, bulimia and two miscarriages and even then I didn't have to resort to antidepressants.
My life will never be the same again.

So they can stick their study where the sun don't shine.

Sorry, my mention of resorting to antidepressants maybe came across the wrong way. I didn't intend to minimise other people's experiences who need to take them. I was just trying to explain how much lockdowns affected me.

Have you read the study?

I quote "comprising ≥90% of the same participants before and during the covid-19 pandemic"

Your point is not pertinent to their study.

Have you read the study?

@TheOrigRights
Whether I've read the study or not is irrelevant.
Don't you dare try to minimise mine and my child's mental suffering by dismissing us as only a number.
There's plenty of other posters saying the same thing.

Try having a bit of compassion instead of treating others with different experiences as inconsequentials.

Your experiences still stand, the study doesn’t include children and women were more impacted than men.

The thread is about the study, I argue that it is relevant to the discussion.

Your experiences are not relevant to this study. That's my scientific opinion, and nothing at all to do with my personal levels of compassion.

I am not treating YOU as an inconsequential.

It makes no sense for people to say "but but but.....", and me challenging that doesn't negate or minimise their experience, it just doesn't belong on a thread discussing this specific study.