Thammasat University students are cordially invited to participate in a free Tuesday, 15 June Oxford University Zoom webinar on Child mental health during the pandemic.
The Thammasat University Library collection includes several books about different aspects of the Novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
The Zoom link for the event is
us02web.zoom.us/j/82291397438?pwd=ZTI0aCs2VTFwUzI1NElhTld2NGtzQT09
and the passcode is 157705.
The webinar will be at 6:15pm Bangkok time on Tuesday, 15 June 2021.
The event is organized by the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford.
For any further questions or information, kindly contact Ms. Gemma Brock at
gemma.brock@psych.ox.ac.uk
The webinar will be hosted by Professor Cathy Creswell (University of Oxford), Professor Alan Stein, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (University Department of Psychiatry, Oxford), and Professor Mina Fazel (NIHR Post Doctoral Research Fellow, University Department of Psychiatry, Oxford as part of the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Series.
No booking is required for the event, which is open to the general public.
The speaker will be Professor Tamsin Ford (University of Cambridge).
Dr. Tamsin Ford CBE teaches at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Her principal research theme is developmental neuroscience.
Dr. Ford’s explains on her faculty webpage:
My research focuses on interventions and services to optimize the mental health of children and young people. Both mental health and services are interpreted broadly to include wellbeing as well as distress rather than children exceeding somewhat arbitrary cut points to meet diagnostic criteria, and all services that deal with children rather than just specialist mental health services.
Her group’s aim is to investigate why some children and adolescents develop mental health problems. Our focus extends to researching the organisation, delivery, and effectiveness of services and interventions for children and young people’s mental health.
She researches the organisation, delivery, and effectiveness of services and interventions for children and young people’s mental health.
New advances in research
There has already been extensive research in the Mental health of children and young people during pandemic, the title of an editorial published in March 2021 in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
The article was coauthored by Dr. Ford, Professor Ann John, who teaches public health and psychiatry, and Professor David Gunnell, who teaches epidemiology.
The article observes,
The mental health of the UK’s children and young people was deteriorating before the pandemic, while health, educational, and social outcomes for children with mental health conditions are worse than for previous cohorts. Between 2004 and 2017 anxiety, depression, and self-harm increased, particularly among teenage girls. Self-harm is an important risk factor for suicide, so it is not surprising that rates of suicide among the UK’s children and young people also increased, though numbers remain low compared with other age groups—fewer than 100 people aged under 18 died by suicide each year in England between 2014 and 2016.
Studies carried out during the pandemic suggest that although some families are coping well, others are facing financial adversity, struggling to home school, and risk experiencing vicious cycles of increasing distress. Probable mental health conditions increased from 10.8% in 2017 to 16% in July 2020 across all age, sex, and ethnic groups according to England’s Mental Health of Children and Young People Survey (MHCYP). A self-selected sample of 2673 parents recruited through social media reported deteriorating mental health and increased behavioural problems among children aged 4 to 11 years between March and May 2020 (during lockdown) but reduced emotional symptoms among 11-16 year olds. The more socioeconomically deprived respondents had consistently worse mental health in both surveys— a stark warning given that economic recession is expected to increase the numbers of families under financial strain.
Deteriorating mental health is by no means uniform. A sizeable proportion of 19 000 8-18 year olds from 237 English schools surveyed during early summer 2020 reported feeling happier (range 25% to 41% by school year group). Similarly, a quarter of young people in the MHCYP survey reported that lockdown had made their life better. While there was no overall change in anxiety, depression, or wellbeing among roughly 1000 13-14 year olds in south west England between October 2019 and April 2020, those who were struggling at baseline significantly improved on all three measures.
Among results of the pandemic in the UK is a rise in eating disorders among young people:
The national referral statistics for eating disorders in England show a doubling in the number of urgent referrals during 2020 and a smaller increase in non-urgent referrals. Known triggers for self-harm and poor mental health are aggravated by pandemic restrictions, including separation from friends, arguments with parents, unresolvable arguments on social media, strained finances, academic stress, and feelings of isolation. School closures are particularly difficult for families facing other adversities…
The long term effects also remain uncertain. What we do know is that education has been disrupted and many young people now face an uncertain future. Policy makers must recognise the importance of education to social and mental health outcomes alongside an appropriate focus on employment and economic prospects. As “children are the living message we send to a time we will not see,”26 we urgently need to improve our efforts to meet their needs and to ensure that this generation is not disproportionately disadvantaged by covid-19.
Useful advice for parents
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Its website offers some suggestions about how to help children and their families cope with the challenges of the pandemic:
Children and young people can be particularly overwhelmed by stress related to a traumatic event, like the COVID-19 pandemic. They may show stress through increased anxiety, fear, sadness or worry. When children and young people are struggling to cope with stress, they may exhibit unhealthy eating or sleeping habits, changes in activity level, substance use or other risk behaviors, and difficulty with attention and concentration.
Parents, caregivers, and other trusted adults can serve as sources of social connectedness; they can provide stability, support, and open communication. They can also help children and young people express the many different feelings and thoughts on their mind.
Here are some quick ideas for how to get conversations started with children and young people about how they are feeling and what they are struggling with regarding COVID-19. You don’t have to use these exact words—you know best how to speak with your child, adolescent or youth. In addition, how we talk to children and young people varies depending on their age and developmental level.
COVID-19 is a new disease, which can be confusing. Do you have any questions about it? If I don’t know the answer, I can try to find it or maybe we could search for it together.
People can be angry, sad, or worried when something bad happens. Those feelings can make you feel confused or uncomfortable. Tell me what you have been feeling since the changes started.
What worries you most about COVID-19?
Have you been feeling nervous about going back to school because of COVID-19?
Wearing masks and staying at a distance from others is not something we were used to doing. How do you feel about that?
When our minds are stuck on bad things, it can be really hard to focus on other things. Have you ever felt this way? What kinds of things does your mind get stuck on?
Is there anything that you are looking forward to, for when we can connect in-person more safely and return to more normal activities—like a vacation, movie, graduation or playing on a sports team? Tell me about what that might look like!
Some of these conversation starters are used in Psychological First Aid (PFA) – an approach commonly used among disaster survivors to cope with trauma. PFA can be useful for parents to help children and young people cope by enabling and maintaining environments that promote safety, calmness, connectedness to others, self-efficacy (empowerment), and hopefulness. Remember: It’s okay not to have an answer, just being there to listen in a non-judgmental way can be helpful!
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)