Monthly correlates of longitudinal child mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic according to children and caregivers

Multiple reviews identify the broad, pervasive initial impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of children, who may be particularly vulnerable to long-term psychiatric sequelae of the ongoing pandemic. However, limited longitudinal research examines persistence of, or change in, children’s distress or psychiatric symptomatology. From June 2020 through December 2021, we enrolled two cohorts of families of children aged 8–13 from Southwestern Ontario into a staggered baseline, longitudinal design that leveraged multi-informant report (N = 317 families). In each family, one child and one parent/guardian completed a baseline assessment, 6 monthly follow-up assessments, and one final follow-up assessment 9 months post-baseline. At each assessment, the child and parent/guardian completed the CoRonavIruS health Impact Survey and measures of child anxiety, depressive, irritability, and posttraumatic stress syndromes. Children’s mental health, indexed by the severity of multiple syndromes, fluctuated over the study period. Elevated local monthly COVID-19 prevalence, hospitalization, and death rates were associated with monthly elevations in children’s reported worry about contracting COVID-19 and stress related to stay-at-home orders. In turn, both elevated monthly worry about contracting COVID-19 and stress related to stay-at-home orders were associated with monthly elevations in child- and parent-/guardian-report of children’s emotional distress and psychiatric syndromes. This study illustrates the importance of, and informs the potential design of, longitudinal research to track the mental health of children, who may be particularly vulnerable to broad psychosocial sequelae of health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00787-022-02121-4.