The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Childhood Mental Health and Mental Health Service Utilization in a Clinical Sample

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young children’s mental health and their engagement in mental health services. Previous research investigating the impact of COVID-19 on children’s mental health and their utilization of mental health services has rarely included children under 5 years of age thus far, and studies that have included this age range have not made this age group the main focus. Children, especially young children, rely on their caregivers to know how to cope and how they should feel during stressful events (Silverman & La Greca, 2002). Therefore, the first aim of this study was to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic and the caregiver-child relationship impacted children’s mental health symptoms. The second aim of the study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 and the child’s symptom presentation on families’ engagement and attendance in mental health treatment. Data were collected on children aged 0 to 5 years old (N = 343) from January 2017 to April 2022 by using archival medical records in collaboration with a local community mental health organization. Results found that the caregiver-child relationship had a significant impact on clinically significant mental health symptoms in children, regardless of whether the data was collected before or after COVID-19 began. It also found that both caregivers and children were rated as less engaged after the pandemic began if the child was experiencing externalizing symptoms. Further, the results displayed that children received less therapy sessions after the pandemic began, and that families received a similar number of overall services in both time periods regardless of symptom presentation.