The effects of COVID-19 on child mental health: Biannual assessments up to April 2022 in a clinical and two general population samples.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had an acute impact on child mental and social health, but long-term effects are still unclear. We examined how child mental health has developed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic up to 2 years into the pandemic (April 2022).

Methods: We included children (age 8-18) from two general population samples ( = 222-1333 per measurement and  = 2401-13,362 for pre-covid data) and one clinical sample receiving psychiatric care ( = 334-748).

Internalizing problems before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in independent samples of Dutch children and adolescents with and without pre-existing mental health problems.

The aim of the study was to assess internalizing problems before and during the pandemic with data from Dutch consortium Child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, consisting of two Dutch general population samples (GS) and two clinical samples (CS) referred to youth/psychiatric care. Measures of internalizing problems were obtained from ongoing data collections pre-pandemic (N = 35,357; N = 4487) and twice during the pandemic, in Apr-May 2020 (N = 3938; clinical: N = 1008) and in Nov-Dec 2020 (N = 1489; N = 1536), in children and adolescents (8-18 years) with parent (Brief Problem Monitor) and/or child reports (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System). Results show that, in the general population, internalizing problems were higher during the first peak of the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic based on both child and parent reports.