Children’s mental health, another concern of the pandemic

Children are a group of particular concern in terms of mental health during the coronavirus pandemic, either as patients or descendants of mental therapy providers who work from home, health officials said Monday.

The pandemic has exacerbated the challenges behavioral health workers face, said Cynthia Whitaker, Acting President of the Greater Nashua Center for Mental Health, during an online forum hosted by the U.S. Sen. from New Hampshire, the Democrat Maggie Hassan. She and other experts say that many workers in the sector try to balance their work with supervising their children who take distance classes.

“We have a lot of people who are reaching the breaking point, asking themselves: ‘Can I do my job efficiently, talk to a person who has been through a traumatic event, while in the other room my child cannot connect to Zoom to your math class? ‘”said Rebecca Throop, vice president of community relations for the Seacost Mental Health Center.

Admissions to pediatric mental health centers have declined during the pandemica, indicó Throop, because teachers have not been able to assess the children. And often parents are not trained to do so, he noted.

“When we receive children for admissions to the emergency services, the severity of the cases we have seen has skyrocketed”, He commented. “Parents are waiting until there is a crisis and then they bring their children, when it is already so obvious that it is impossible to ignore it”.

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