The coronavirus adversities list keeps on growing as we complete 2 years of living in a pandemic.
The latest research showcased that the coronavirus pandemic is imposing serious mental health issues on the adolescent population of America.
“The problem has always been there. The pandemic, we felt it even more so,” said Levine, who practices at New York-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital and is an associate professor of clinical pediatrics and emergency medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine.
The striking impact of pandemic on the mental health of youth does not come as a surprise for the medical experts as they continue to witness the devastating impacts of covid-19.
Dr. Debora Levine is a pediatric emergency medicine physician in New York City for over two decades.
“We’re seeing it on the ground,” Levine said. “We’re looking for ways to help ameliorate the crisis and in the meantime, we’re actively treating these children who need help.”
“I think this crisis is so significant that we just can’t meet the demand,” she further stated.
One of the major concern of medical experts is that suicidal attempts and depression was already on the rise in adolescents and the young population before the pandemic.
“I am worried about our children,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, said during a recent White House briefing. “[Our] kids have been struggling for a long time, even for this pandemic.”
“Our numbers of referrals on the outpatient side continue to increase — general referrals for common mental health conditions in children and adolescents,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve also seen increases in the demand for crisis services — children and adolescents having to come to the emergency center for crisis evaluations and crisis intervention.”
“That has been very striking within our system and really demonstrating the need,” he said.
“We’re starting to see more kids who were previously well, so they were youngsters who were not having any specific mental health conditions prior to the pandemic, who are now presenting with more depression, anxiety. So things have definitely not been heading in the right direction,” stated Levine.
