Children Were Neglected During the Pandemic. There are Important Lessons Still to Be Learned, Says Analysis; COVID Lockdowns Increased ADHD Risk Among 10-Year-Old Children, New Study Finds, and other C-Virus related stories
Children were neglected during the pandemic. There are important lessons still to be learned, says analysis:
Children are still suffering the consequences of official neglect during the first ‘shock period’ of the COVID-19 pandemic, when families were not widely prioritized by public policies, according to analysis published this week of 40 countries’ responses to the pandemic.
The research from Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI) and UNICEF, concludes official policy responses aimed at children and families tended to be short-term, reactive, and focused more around protecting adults rather than protecting children. In the first nine to 10 months of the pandemic, some 30% of high-income countries studied created no new policies specifically aimed at supporting children.
Professor Mary Daly, professor of sociology and social policy at Oxford, who led the study, said, “The immediate and ongoing impact of COVID-19 policies on children has been too little considered and the full story of how well countries responded to children’s needs has still to be told.
“Children cannot speak for themselves and face ongoing needs to help them recover from the pandemic and to ensure that future policies better protect them. This report and database fill a pressing requirement for information and intelligence to enable us to learn lessons and not repeat mistakes.” —>READ MORE HERE
COVID lockdowns increased ADHD risk among 10-year-old children, new study finds:
Pandemic restrictions ‘worsened kids’ ability to focus,’ said Dr. Marc Siegel
The COVID-19 lockdowns had a widespread impact on children’s mental health, many studies have shown — and now new research highlights how those lockdowns impacted ADHD diagnoses in 10-year-old children.
A study by the University of Copenhagen in Denmark determined that kids in this age group who already had a genetic risk of developing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder saw a “significant increase” in diagnoses after the pandemic.
Researchers examined two groups of children, a total of 593, in 2019 and 2021.
Children assessed after the lockdown who had polygenic risk scores (PRS) for behavior and attention problems had a large increase in ADHD diagnoses after the lockdown, researchers found.
Those who had low PRS did not show that increase. (Polygenic risk scores measure an individual’s genetic disposition to any given disease.)
“We found that the results from our data, regarding our cohort in Denmark, replicated what many studies had already reported with other samples — the lockdown related to the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with an increase in mental health problems in children,” María Hernández Lorca, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, told Fox News Digital in an email.
“However, we took it a step further and examined how genetic predisposition to ADHD influenced these findings,” she went on.
Researchers used data from the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood 2010, an ongoing population-based study that included an assessment of 10-year-old children’s cognitive and psychopathological characteristics. —>READ MORE HERE
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