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Changes in UK Pre-Schooler’s Mental Health Symptoms over the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic: data from Co-SPYCE Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2023

H. Dodd ,
S. Skripkauskaite ,
A. Shum ,
P. Waite  and
P. Lawrence
H. Dodd*
Affiliation:
Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter, Exeter
S. Skripkauskaite
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford
A. Shum
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford
P. Waite
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford
P. Lawrence
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruption to the lives of children and their families. Pre-school children may have been particularly vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic, with the closure of childcare facilities, playgrounds, playcentres and parent and toddler groups limiting their opportunities for social interaction at a crucial stage of development. Additionally, for parents working from home, caring for pre-school aged children who require high levels of support and care, was likely challenging

Objectives

We aimed to conduct an intensive longitudinal study to examine trajectories of pre-schoolers’ mental symptoms in the United Kingdom during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

UK‐based parents and carers (n = 1520) of pre-school‐aged children (2 to 4 years) completed monthly online surveys about their pre-schoolers’ mental health between April 2020 and March 2021. The survey examined changes in children’s emotional symptoms, conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention.

Results

Pre-schoolers’ emotional problems and hyperactivity/inattention symptoms declined from April through summer 2020 and then increased again during the autumn and winter 2020/2021 as lockdowns were re-introduced. Pre-schoolers who attended childcare showed greater decline in symptom severity than those who did not. Older children, compared to younger, showed greater lability of emotion symptom severity. Attending childcare predicted lower symptom severity across all three domains of conduct problems, emotional symptoms, and hyperactivity/inattention, while the opposite pattern was observed for children whose parent had a mental health problem.

Conclusions

Our findings reinforce the importance of examining pre-schoolers’ mental health in the context of micro and macro-level factors. Interventions focusing on family factors such as parent mental health, as well as continued provision of childcare, may have most potential to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on young children’s mental health.

Disclosure of Interest

None Declared

Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 66 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 31st European Congress of Psychiatry , March 2023 , pp. S121
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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