Quote:The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a profound mental health toll on teens and young adults — with self-harm and overdose claims skyrocketing, particularly among 13- to 18-year-olds, according to a troubling new national study of medical records and insurance claims.

FAIR Health, a nonprofit that collects data for the largest database of privately billed health insurance claims in the US, looked at 32 billion records and studied those in the 13-18 and 19-22 age ranges.

The organization tracked month-by-month changes from January to November 2020, compared to the same period from the year before.

In March and April 2020, total mental health claims for youngsters ages 13 to 18, as a percentage of all medical claim lines, approximately doubled compared to the two months in 2019, according to the study.

Claims for overdoses specifically in that age group jumped to 94.91 percent of all medical claims in March 2020 and 119.31 percent in April 2020, compared to the same period a year earlier.

Claim lines for substance use disorders also spiked as a percentage of all claims in March (64.64 percent) and April (62.69 percent) 2020, compared to their corresponding months in 2019.

Also in the 13-18 age group, in April 2020, major depressive disorder claim lines increased 83.9 percent and generalized anxiety disorder claim lines rose 93.6 percent, according to the study.

In general, the 19-22 group had mental health trends similar to but less pronounced than the younger set.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, particularly on that of young people,” FAIR Health president Robin Gelburd said in a statement.

“The findings in our new report have implications for all those responsible for the care of young people, including providers, parents, educators, policymakers and payors,” she added.

Those seeking help with mental health rose during that time, despite other medical claims declining, Gelburd noted.

“We clearly see a reduction in people accessing medical care, particularly in March and April, but we see a continued utilization of mental health services during that period,” she told MedPage Today:

“The need for mental health services persisted and in some ways increased during that period.”

Her team also found that gender disparities in mental health services that existed before the pandemic were widened.

While girls accounted for two-thirds of claim lines before the outbreak, the percentage of claims attributed to females jumped from March on, reaching 71 percent in November 2020.

“These results are generally consistent with other researchers’ findings that women are nearly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with mental illness,” the report said.

The study also showed a major increase in intentional self-harm claims as a percentage of all medical claims, rising 91 percent in March and nearly doubling in April 2020 compared with 2019, MedPage Today reported.

Females were up to five times as likely as males to be treated for intentional self-harm, the researchers found.

Comparing August 2019 to August 2020 in the Northeast, for the 13-18 group, there was a 333.93 percent spike in intentional self-harm claims, a rate higher than that in any other region in any month studied for the group.

Dr. Jess Shatkin of the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Medical Center said that while the data aren’t surprising, they “speak to something we’ve all been concerned about.”

“We know that teenagers already have high rates of mental illness,” Shatkin told MedPage Today. “Now [with the pandemic], their parents are starting to struggle, with relationships, jobs, food security. It just ups the ante. We already see vulnerability and this just makes them more vulnerable.”

FAIR Health’s new white paper, the seventh in its COVID-19 studies, is titled “The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health: A Study of Private Healthcare Claims.”

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Can't fund teen mental health treatment because Nancy has to have her ******* subway.

Kind of makes you wish we had taken it seriously sooner right?

(03-03-2021 05:07 PM)Danforth Wrote:  Kind of makes you wish we had taken it seriously sooner right?

I imagine the increases in mental health issues are from lockdowns and school closures. There's no other reasonable explanation for the deteriorating mental health of children. We'd have been better off never locking down and just encouraging social distancing like Sweden. Not sure how taking things "more seriously" would've helped. More severe restrictions would make mental health matters worse.

Human beings...especially young ones....aren't meant to be isolated and kept from human interaction

They are nothing but collateral damage.