Significant increase in depression seen among children during first lockdown

The first lockdown led to a significant increase in symptoms of depression among children, highlighting the unintended consequences of school closures, according to a new study from the University of Cambridge. Our study is one of the first to follow the same children over time during lockdown and suggests that symptoms of depression among children got much worse during this period Giacomo Bignardi In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK Government implemented a national "lockdown" involving school closures and social distancing. There has been widespread concern that these measures would negatively impact child and adolescent mental health. To date, however, there is relatively little direct evidence of this. The most direct way of measuring the association between the onset of lockdown and children's mental health is to follow the same individuals over a length of time and look for changes - so-called 'longitudinal' changes. To test whether changes in emotional wellbeing, anxiety and depression symptoms occurred during lockdown since their initial assessment, a team at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, examined data from mental health assessments on 168 children (aged 8-12 years) before and during the UK lockdown. These assessments included self-reports, caregiver-reports, and teacher-reports.