Pandemic’s long-term impact on children’s mental health, especially those with autism, underlines need for timely interventions and policy changes.

“The toll from the pandemic on kids didn’t happen between 2020 and 2023. It’s going to happen from now into the next five to 10 years,” Jeff Sperring, Pediatrician and Board Chair, Children’s Hospital Association.

Doctors are increasingly concerned that the greatest effects of the pandemic could still be ahead. For children, there is often a lag time in the experience of trauma and the presentation of anxiety or depression. The significant destabilization of children’s lives experienced during the pandemic may well mean a host of mental illness diagnoses associated with this event are only just starting to emerge.

During the pandemic, autistic children were particularly vulnerable to mental health decline. Loss of learning support and access to physicians, loss of access to mental health services and support, and family financial insecurity.

In a study group, more than half of the autistic children and their families interviewed experienced mental health deterioration and covid related stress. It is important that the characteristics associated with this specific mental health decline are highlighted and used to provide clinical and policy opportunities for intervention at multiple levels.