Why did we do this study?
- The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted children’s mental health, with children from lower-income backgrounds experiencing the pandemic differently than those from more resourced families.
- We investigated changes in children’s mental health over time during the pandemic and examined how familial characteristics (e.g., income and education) are related to these changes.
What did we do?
- We used data from 220 families, focusing on family characteristics and children’s mental health at three time points:
- Wave 2: Prior to COVID-19
- COVID-19 Wave 1: the beginning of COVID-19
- COVID-19 Wave 2: COVID follow up
- The following data was collected at each time point:
- Wave 2: children’s mental health, household income, number of siblings, mother’s education, and mother’s first language
- COVID-19 Wave 1: children’s mental health, household income, and number of siblings
- COVID-19 Wave 2: children’s mental health, household income, and number of siblings
- Children’s Mental Health was reported by parents using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) with 4 difficulties subscales (emotion, conduct, hyperactivity, and peer) and 1 strength subscale (prosocial)
What did we find?
- Different aspects of children’s mental health changed differently from prior to, initially, and well into the pandemic. Specifically,
- Children’s emotional and hyperactivity problems increased as the pandemic progressed while children’s conduct problems decreased
- Children’s prosocial behaviours improved throughout the pandemic
- In terms of family characteristics, children from higher-income families had fewer peer problems and displayed more prosocial behaviour overall. Children from higher-income families experienced a faster increase in emotional problems over time.
What does this mean?
- Some aspects of mental health improved while others worsened after the onset of the pandemic.
- Families with different characteristics exhibited their own strengths and challenges. In this low-income sample, children from relatively higher-income families did not perform better across all mental health outcomes when compared to children from lower-income families.
