Coronavirus: Children

(asked on 10th December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on children’s (a) mental health and (b) emotional resilience by region.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 5th January 2021

‘Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, 2020: Wave 1 follow up to the 2017 survey’ was published on 22 October 2020 by NHS Digital and is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england/2020-wave-1-follow-up

The survey states that, in 2020, rates of probable mental disorder in children aged 5 to 16 years old ranged from 10% in London to 20.5% in the West Midlands. The increased rates of probable mental disorder in most regions between 2017 and 2020 were not found to be statistically significant.

The sample size in this survey was sufficiently big to detect differences in England between 2017 and 2020 but when divided across regions, the samples sizes will be smaller at regional level, and these smaller sizes may not have been sufficient to detect a statistically significant difference.

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