No real mental health crisis from pandemic

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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.

I already said I'm a teacher upthread. I meant practice as in my practice/doing of my profession not a clinical profession. Sorry to confuse. The language in my time of training was that we were teaching practtioners, were to be reflective in our practice etc.

So eg. having been up close with the direction things were going in in terms of young people accessing the support and services needed and how their behaviour and wellbeing was being impacted by social and economic trends a long time before, during and after covid.

Why are pp extrapolating to children if not included

Ok for men, not for others, I’m not surprised when seeing experiences

I work with child who need mental health support.
I think it’s far too easy to blame covid, it’s hides some of the other issues that are at play and by blaming covid it almost removes responsibility.
poverty, phones and social media are all massive reasons why mental health is in decline.
add to that lack of funding, access to health care. But these things have been going on for ages. Covid is just an easy get out clause.

Surely it's like any major event - how people coped was a combination of home circumstances, any domestic abuse, health, ages of household, and general resilience.

Bring locked down in a house with a nice garden was very different to being copped up in a perhaps grim flat with young children, bored out of their minds.

Or with disabled children/adults, who stopped getting the support services they need.

I think, certainly, anxiety, stress and anger has increased. Again, it's because of a mixture of things - debt, cost of living, trying to access healthcare from a collapsing NHS etc.

Overall, lockdown was harmful, as is now being proved. Both emotionally and financially.

What a load of bollocks, I can’t imagine this study was statistically significant, given the size of the study and the quality of participants.

my mental health went in the toilet from the pandemic. Nearly lost my job, lost my mother. I was a robust sound minded person pre covid. I ended up on antidepressants, I had insomnia, I had to single parent in isolation. It was horrific.

I’m still reeling from it now.

I’m sure there have been some silver linings for some, but I cannot believe for a second that the overall consensus is that it wasn’t a big deal on people’s mh, even if the study has come from the British medical journal. Even reputable sources can be wrong. And I believe that to be the case here.

@MarshaBradyo

No idea.

You wouldn’t see dc at home though. Dc didn’t interact much for two terms with teachers. They would have a far lower insight to his mh than I did.

I think it's bollocks. I'm still not back to normal since lockdown.

12 year old ds recently looked wistful talking about lock down and described it as good times.

I have 3 dc and all of them were affected differently. Dd is the one who seems to have suffered the most and missed out on much more than her younger brothers. Not just related to her education but socially as well and has been left depressed and anxious and working damn hard on herself when she's at a stage in her life she should be enjoying.

My DC would say she enjoyed the lockdown during the pandemic - not having to be around lots of people, being able to sleep in, being able to be in contact with friends in different time zones.

In reality, a disrupted routine and transition to secondary school has played its part in her now being out of school for the past three years, and development of an eating disorder.

It wasn’t a single event it was a period of time during which many dealt with a series of difficulties in their own lives made far harder because of lockdown etc.

I have a very good friend who looks back on the pandemic as a time of restriction and inconvenience but nothing more. Her children have put it behind them and all is good. My experience is different; I lost one close young relative to Covid in the first lockdown and nursed my DF through cancer until he died in the second lockdown. I was one of those people who couldn’t enter the hospital, couldn’t be with a dying relative, couldn’t have a funeral and witnessed the terror of dying a horrible death in isolation without adequate medical care. My DS dropped out of school, my daughter who was in year 12 became very depressed and it’s really changed the course of her life. I worked all the way through in primary care MH and my experience is that there was a surge in people needing support, not at the very beginning but towards the end of 2020. It has never really slowed since then. Many referred to me had not struggled previously.

of course I’m just talking about my experience and my observations of the day to day demand for the services of someone working in MH services. Of course not everything can be blamed on the pandemic and there are variables others have mentioned but I find it hard to dismiss what I’ve observed personally and professionally.

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

Staying home in lockdown may have suited many young people, I know for both my children the reopening/differing environments/closing/reopening was awful. They went back to a completely different school environment, most of the things that made school enjoyable had been stripped out, they had no access to means of learning that suited them, were separated from friends in different class groups etc etc, and then school closed again, and when they went back the environment had changed again.

Being at home in lockdown was fine, the lack of structure, consistency and predictability in the school setting was disastrous for my two with ASN who need to know what they’re going into and what’s expected of them.

Mermaids? Similar lack of grasp on reality and disregard of the inpact on women????

Ah the furlough brigade, who enjoyed the taxpayers money for doing nothing. I guess this study shows there were more of you than we knew.

impact - bloody fat thumbs

For those on their own I think it was really awful. But for may children I think having to go back to a rigid school system is more problematic than the lockdown was.

It’s concerning as posters are jumping on it as see I said it was all fine.

If children were not included it doesn’t show that.

How can they tell? It's not like we actually have mental health services you can access in this country during the pandemic you could barely access a doctor 🙄

Mine improved massively, long term now and my relationship with my partner and daughter improved massively.

But I think that depended a lot on the person and their circumstances. For some it was devastating.

My neice had to be reffered to the school mental health team and from there, reffered out of school for emergency therapy. She was only 8 at the time. She started having night terrors where everyone around her was dying, she became obsessed with a "cure" and kept havig breakdowns thinking the government would never make it in time. She became obsessed with funerals and death. Even after lockdown, she wont hold anyones hand or "share germs". It has completely changed her as a person. And she is not the only kid I know who has been affected.

@MarshaBradyo

It doesn't show much of anything!

Except some men who already had mh symptoms didn't appear to have worse mh by the end of lock downs

I heard about this study but I haven't read it, and I'm very sceptical. I'd need to check how and when and where they surveyed people. As a GP I would say then number of mental health consultations I do now is about 3 times more than pre Covid. Many many people have never recovered and not gone back to work, following the stress and fear of Covid lockdowns. All my GP friends and colleagues say the same. I'm guessing the people doing the study didn't speak to any GPs.

This study only looks on the direct impacts rather then all the indirect impacts. The lost opportunities for early intervention to CAMHS/ed psychs by schools and parents (we were all told to only to go to the doctors in emergencies). Huge increase in waitlists.

Before people pile in saying it is underfunding of these services, yes that's true, but if you look at countries round the World they are all experiencing the same issues - massive backlogs.

I am not saying that the lockdowns were not the right thing to do but to pretend they haven't had massive impacts on people's MH is just utterly illogical. Any massive societal change will have an impact.

We weren’t furloughed. As I said before, lower class people were more likely to be furloughed because jobs such as waiters, cleaners etc couldn’t be done from home. Middle class people mostly kept working remotely.

It's a weighty report, but short for its height.