COVID’s impact on young people’s mental health

What was the effect of the pandemic on young people’s mental health?

That’s the theme of the next webinar being hosted by our Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Surveillance System team.

The event – at 11am on 29 June – will focus on children and young people’s mental health at population level and will summarise the evolving evidence on the subject.

Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have moved into a different phase in the UK, there is much to be done to understand and address the mental health impacts, and the unintended consequences of our public health response for children and young people.

Governments and other agencies also need to plan for future pandemics, balancing risks, harms and benefits, and the differential impacts across society.

Such decision-making must be informed by the best possible evidence from research and practice, and our learning from COVID-19.

What will you learn from this webinar?

Drawing on the latest data from the Mental Health of Children and Young People in England surveys and other high-quality sources, the webinar will discuss the following questions:

• What do we know about the impact on children and young people’s mental health on a population level?
• What are the implications for future trends, and how might this impact on services?
• How can we be better prepared in future to support children and young people’s mental health in the case of a pandemic?

Information on our guest presenter, Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado

Tamsin Newlove-Delgado is a Senior Clinical Lecturer with the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Research Collaboration (ChYMe) at the University of Exeter, and an Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine with the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID, formerly Public Health England).

She has been a member of NHS Digital’s Mental Health of Children and Young People in England survey consortium throughout the pandemic, providing academic input to the 2020, 2021 and 2022 surveys, and was lead author on the MHCYP 2021 survey report.

Influenced by her clinical experience in child and adolescent psychiatry prior to entering public health, Tamsin's research concentrates on public health aspects of the mental health of children and young people.

She is funded by an NIHR Advanced Fellowship, which aims to study time trends in child and adolescent mental health and mental health related service contacts.

For any questions, please contact CAPSS@rcpsych.ac.uk.

Back to our May 2022 eNewsletter.