大流行后接受心理健康治疗的儿童人数创纪录

HERSHEY, Pa. — When schools closed in the spring of 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of children and adolescents receiving mental health treatment in the United States fell by more than half. By 2022, that number had not only rebounded, it exceeded pre-pandemic levels, according to a new national study by researchers from Penn State College of Medicine.

In an analysis of 13 million health records of children and adolescents, available online now ahead of publication in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Open, the researchers found the rise in pediatric mental health treatment patterns was driven largely by new patients versus existing patients seeking more care. Rates of first-time prescriptions for psychiatric medication increased by 35%, outpacing the rise of both first-time psychiatric diagnoses and psychotherapy courses — 24% and 26%, respectively — compared with the years before the pandemic.

The steepest increases were among girls. 6 至 12 岁女孩的抗抑郁药处方增加了 137%，13 至 18 岁女孩的抗抑郁处方增加了 65%。

“Youth mental health was already worsening before the pandemic, which further accelerated these trends,” said Raman Baweja, professor of psychiatry and behavioral health and of public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine and the first author on the study. This suggests that the rise in psychiatric treatment for mental health not only followed the pandemic but also a decade-long rise of heightened emotional distress among young people, documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey. “但这并没有对每个人造成同样的影响。一些群体，尤其是女孩，受到的影响更大。”

Among all pediatric patients in the “treatment-engaged” group, most measures of medication use changed only slightly between 2018 and 2022, with antidepressant climbing from 32% to 36% among adolescent girls.