Study Looks at Trends in Pediatric Mental Health Diagnoses During Pandemic

THURSDAY, May 25, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Trends in pediatric mental health (MH) diagnoses differed by age and sex over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a research letter published online May 22 in JAMA Network Open.

Loreen Straub, M.D., from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues examined trends in pediatric MH diagnoses (anxiety disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], depression, and eating disorders) during the pandemic, stratified by age and sex. Data, from a geographically diverse commercial health care claims database, were analyzed for the prepandemic period (January 2018 to March 2020), the early pandemic period (April 2020 to September 2020), and the recent pandemic period (October 2020 to March 2022). For each calendar month, about 1.7 million youths aged 6 to 18 years contributed data.

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