Young children's mental health during the pandemic: Results from Australia and the USA
View/ Open
File version
Version of Record (VoR)
Author(s)
Vasileva, Mira
Marsac, Meghan L
Alisic, Eva
Cobham, Vanessa E
Davis, Seetha H
Donovan, Caroline L
Hildenbrand, Aimee K
Hoehn, Elisabeth
March, Sonja
Middeldorp, Christel M
Miller, Alisa B
Smith, Tess
Wamser-Nanney, Rachel
De Young, Alexandra
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2021
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Background: Studies investigating child wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic have focused primarily on school-aged children. Objective: This study aimed to describe COVID-19-related experiences and wellbeing of young children during the pandemic. Method: We collected baseline data between May and August 2020 in Australia and between July 2020 and February 2021 in the United States (US) via online surveys. Participants included caregivers of children aged 1-5 years (N = 826 Australia; N = 631 US). For each country, we analysed the distribution of indicators of child wellbeing and conducted linear regression models to determine ...
View more >Background: Studies investigating child wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic have focused primarily on school-aged children. Objective: This study aimed to describe COVID-19-related experiences and wellbeing of young children during the pandemic. Method: We collected baseline data between May and August 2020 in Australia and between July 2020 and February 2021 in the United States (US) via online surveys. Participants included caregivers of children aged 1-5 years (N = 826 Australia; N = 631 US). For each country, we analysed the distribution of indicators of child wellbeing and conducted linear regression models to determine whether an index of COVID-19 related challenges (range 0-60, e.g., job/ income loss, loss of childcare), pre-existing child mental health difficulties, and caregiver distress predicted child wellbeing. Results: Although participants from Australia and the US differed in their direct exposure to COVID-19 itself, the indirect impact due to loss and disruptions to daily life was similar (Australia: M = 18.5, SD = 9.4; US: M = 20.4, SD = 9.6). Between 26.1% and 27.5% of children in Australia and 12.5% and 20.8% of children in the US demonstrated high to very high levels of anger, anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbance. In both countries, greater exposure to indirect impacts of the pandemic was significantly associated with more child emotional and behavioural difficulties (β = .16 to .27) even when controlling for pre-existing child emotional difficulties and caregiver distress. Conclusions: Findings indicate that the challenges very young children are facing during the pandemic should not be underestimated. Targeted intervention is needed to support young children and their families in coping with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
View less >
View more >Background: Studies investigating child wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic have focused primarily on school-aged children. Objective: This study aimed to describe COVID-19-related experiences and wellbeing of young children during the pandemic. Method: We collected baseline data between May and August 2020 in Australia and between July 2020 and February 2021 in the United States (US) via online surveys. Participants included caregivers of children aged 1-5 years (N = 826 Australia; N = 631 US). For each country, we analysed the distribution of indicators of child wellbeing and conducted linear regression models to determine whether an index of COVID-19 related challenges (range 0-60, e.g., job/ income loss, loss of childcare), pre-existing child mental health difficulties, and caregiver distress predicted child wellbeing. Results: Although participants from Australia and the US differed in their direct exposure to COVID-19 itself, the indirect impact due to loss and disruptions to daily life was similar (Australia: M = 18.5, SD = 9.4; US: M = 20.4, SD = 9.6). Between 26.1% and 27.5% of children in Australia and 12.5% and 20.8% of children in the US demonstrated high to very high levels of anger, anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbance. In both countries, greater exposure to indirect impacts of the pandemic was significantly associated with more child emotional and behavioural difficulties (β = .16 to .27) even when controlling for pre-existing child emotional difficulties and caregiver distress. Conclusions: Findings indicate that the challenges very young children are facing during the pandemic should not be underestimated. Targeted intervention is needed to support young children and their families in coping with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
View less >
Conference Title
European Journal of Psychotraumatology
Volume
12
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subject
Clinical psychology
Social Sciences
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Psychology, Clinical
Psychiatry