Evaluating the psychosocial status of BC children and youth during the COVID-19 pandemic: A MyHEARTSMAP cross-sectional study

Melissa L Woodward; Abrar Hossain; Alaina Chun; Cindy Liu; Kaitlyn Kilyk; Jeffrey N Bone; Garth Meckler; Tyler Black; S Evelyn Stewart; Hasina Samji; Skye Barbic; Quynh Doan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0281083

Evaluating the psychosocial status of BC children and youth during the COVID-19 pandemic: A MyHEARTSMAP cross-sectional study

PLoS One. 2023 Mar 31;18(3):e0281083. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281083. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Melissa L Woodward^{1

2}, Abrar Hossain¹, Alaina Chun², Cindy Liu^{1

2}, Kaitlyn Kilyk², Jeffrey N Bone², Garth Meckler^{1

2}, Tyler Black³, S Evelyn Stewart^{2

3

4}, Hasina Samji^{2

5

6}, Skye Barbic⁷, Quynh Doan^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
² British Columbia Children's Hospital Research Institute, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
³ Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁴ British Columbia Mental Health and Substance Use Services Research Institute, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁵ Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
⁶ British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, Provincial Health Services Authority, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁷ Department of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Abstract

Background: Understanding the psychosocial status of children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic is vital to the appropriate and adequate allocation of social supports and mental health resources. This study evaluates the burden of mental health concerns and the impact of demographic factors while tracking mental health service recommendations to inform community service needs.

Methods: MyHEARTSMAP is a digital self-assessment mental health evaluation completed by children and their guardian throughout British Columbia between August 2020 to July 2021. Severity of mental health concerns was evaluated across psychiatric, social, functioning, and youth health domains. Proportional odds modelling evaluated the impact of demographic factors on severity. Recommendations for support services were provided based on the evaluation.

Results: We recruited 541 families who completed 424 psychosocial assessments on individual children. Some degree of difficulty across the psychiatric, social, or functional domains was reported for more than half of children and adolescents. Older youth and those not attending any formal school or education program were more likely to report greater psychiatric difficulty. Girls experienced greater social concerns, and children attending full-time school at-home were more likely to identify difficulty within the youth health domain but were not more likely to have psychiatric difficulties. Considerations to access community mental health service were triggered in the majority (74%) of cases.

Conclusions: Psychosocial concerns are highly prevalent amongst children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on identified needs of this cohort, additional community health supports are required, particularly for higher risk groups.

Copyright: © 2023 Woodward et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Child
Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
Humans
Mental Health
Mental Health Services*
Pandemics

Grants and funding

This study was funded through the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation with directed donations from generous supporters, including Rio Tinto. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.