The Impact of Changes in Mental Health on Children due to Covid-19

COVID-19 or coronavirus disease 2019, is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This disease can be serious and cause millions of deaths in worldwide. People infected with COVID-19 can spread the virus even if they don't appear sick. Common symptoms are fever, cough, and difficulty breathing. Because of these conditions, a lot of people can't go to school, work, grocery shopping, or anywhere. Education adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic included using virtual platforms like Zoom, webinars and teleconferencing, online training modules, and web videos (Alvan-Emeka et al., 2023). Many students have reported struggling with online learning and have experienced negative changes in lifestyle, behaviors, and mental health.

The pandemic has led to an increase in stress, fear, sadness, frustration, cognitive impairment, and loneliness among students which can exacerbate existing mental health conditions. Children feel frustration easily during this situation because they need to wait and be patient for an indefinite time. The ability to manage frustration induced by having to wait for valued outcomes emerges across children (Ying Chan et al., 2023). There has been a growing demand for mental health services for children but many children not receiving the needed care, particularly those from lower-income families. 

Resources flowing from the federal level to state and local levels are often either inadequate or time-limited, with fluctuations in funding amounts that hinder efforts to establish strong, ongoing programs that provide or connect students to essential mental health services (Colomer Ann et al., 2023). Complete mental health, resilience, and social support across the lifespan varies substantially depending upon the particular economic and social circumstances each nation is exposed too (Pia Schonfeld et al., 2017).

Therefore, the provision of enhanced mental health resources and support programs for children and parents has been emphasized as an urgent need to address the mental health challenges faced by children. Children's mental health should be a top priority in the post-pandemic recovery plan, and targeted mental health care is essential to support their mental health recovery. The impact on children's mental health, with increased levels of stress, fear, frustration, and cognitive impairment requires a comprehensive approach that includes increased access to mental health services, support for vulnerable populations, and the promotion of positive coping strategies within families and communities. 

In the light of the persistence of cognitive impairment in some cases long after the resolution of covid, cognitive training programs, and eventually other interventions, such as the transcranial direct stimulation, should be considered as potential treatment strategies for patients showing a cognitive impairment (Silvana Galderisi et al., 2023). In summary, COVID-19 has a lot of effects on children, such as anxiety, frustration, fear, sadness, loneliness, and others. The effect causes children's mental disorders so appropriate solutions or treatment are needed to overcome them.

References

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