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As widespread community transmission of COVID-19 in the United States continues, researchers say the focus must be on the broader effects of the pandemic on health and well-being. In particular, they say it is important to understand the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of children and adolescents.
The rate of severe mental illness in children has increased over the past two decades. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant financial and psychosocial stressors that may increase the burden of mental health needs on young people.
Young people facing the most serious mental illness must be hospitalized in mental health. In a recent study in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Polina Krass, a Penn LDI associate researcher and pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the co-authors report the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people at a local behavioral health hospital. The study details the medical and psychiatric care of 19 patients aged 11 to 17 who had COVID-19 while requiring psychiatric hospitalization. Caring for these patients required balancing physical and mental health care needs while ensuring adequate infection control.
The researchers also describe an innovative partnership between the mental hospital and a local children’s hospital, which has been leveraged to provide acute medical care in a mental health setting.
The team learned three main lessons: physical distance directly conflicts with patients’ mental health needs; symptom-based testing for COVID-19 was inappropriate for the population; and the experience revealed the vulnerabilities of the inpatient-outpatient continuum and underscored the importance of medico-psychiatric partnerships to improve access to mental health care.
This article is by Polina Krass. Read more on Penn LDI.
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