COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.]

Teenage boys were hit hardest by the Covid lockdowns, with their mental health failing to recover despite the return to normality, according to the most comprehensive academic study of its kind.

Early research into how lockdown affected children indicated that girls had suffered more significant mental health problems than boys.

However, a new study carried out by academics from three UK universities, published in the journal European Child + Adolescent Psychiatry, found that over the long term, teenage boys’ mental health was more adversely affected.


The research followed a cohort of about 200 children, aged between 11 and 14 at the time, asking them and their mothers to assess their mental state. It logged data from each child before lockdown, three months after the measures started and again at 15 months into the pandemic.

Researchers then compared this data with historical records that show the usual pattern of mental wellbeing for boys and girls during adolescence.

The academics found that while both sexes had an immediate decline in their mental health, boys then did not experience the natural improvement in mental wellbeing that usually comes with maturation as they move through the teenage years.

Dr Nicky Wright, a lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University and a co-author of the paper, said: “The key message of this is that we expect more boys to be at risk of mental health problems now than we would before [the pandemic].…….

https://www.theguardian.com/society...f-teenage-boys-hardest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other