Forbes Anxiety, adjustment disorders and ADHD are largely to blame for a sharp 26% rise in mental healthcare costs for children in the two-and-a-half years following the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, a new study out Tuesday found—the latest evidence of the pandemic’s dire impact on both kids’ and adults’ mental health.
Researchers with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank, said school closures, social isolation, distancing and the deadly effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on families “severely tested the mental health of children and youths” when the pandemic broke out in early 2020.
An analysis of telehealth, in-person, and overall pediatric mental health services and spending in the U.S. from January of 2019 to August of 2022 found those under age 19 spent 26.1% more on mental healthcare costs during and after the pandemic than they did before.
The early months of the pandemic saw pediatric patients use telehealth services 30 times more often than they did before, the study published in the JAMA Network Open journal said, and usage rates were still 23 times higher than before as of August 2022.
Children and teenagers used mental health services at a rate 22% higher during the pandemic than they did before, and most visits and spending could be attributed to treatment for ADHD, anxiety disorders and adjustment disorder.
The study comes from the same researchers who in August found that spending on mental health services among all Americans leaped more than 50% in the pandemic’s early years, largely for treatment of anxiety disorders, PTSD, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.