238 Adolescent Sleep Variability, Social Jetlag, and Mental Health during COVID-19: Findings from a Large Nationwide Study

Adolescent mental health during covid-19 pandemics: a systematic review

OBJECTIVES

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging outcomes on adolescents' well-being. However, less attention has been paid to the adolescent's mental health during the pandemic. The pandemic may impair adolescents' mental health through stress spillover from other family members, contextual and policy changes, and the disruption of everyday life routines. Therefore, our research is motivated by a need to address the relative scarcity of research examining adolescent mental health during the pandemic.

CONTENT

This systematic review was conducted through the medical database, Web of Science, Scopus, Medline, Embase, Google Scholar, and Cochrane databases for peer-reviewed, cross-sectional, cohort studies assessing the mental health status of adolescents during the Covid-19 virus pandemic from May 2020 till Dec 2022 without language restriction. Keywords were selected based on the Mesh terms and Emtree.

SUMMARY

Studies on coronavirus have revealed many significant psychological effects on teens of all ages. The most commom problems were on the stress and anxiety, sleep disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder. Risk factors were concidered as prior mental health problem, female sexuality, fear of covid-19, nutrition, physical activity and listening the covid 19 news.

OUTLOOK

Considering the critical age of teenagers, the role of parents is vital. Health policy maker should support parents as a key factors to approprate care for adolescent. Parents should be educated on parenting methods during the covid pandemic to avoid irreparable damage of adolescent's mental health.

The impact of COVID-19 lockdown on sleep patterns, emotions, and behaviors of children and adolescents in Taiwan

BACKGROUND

The lockdown in May 2021 was the first and only lockdown implemented in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic. The epidemic in Taiwan has been maintained under relatively better control and this study aimed to examine the impact of the lockdown on sleep and emotional and behavior disturbances in children and adolescents in Taiwan.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Participants over 6 years old were recruited retrospectively from a cohort study, and their parents completed questionnaires including the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ), the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), the Swanson, Nolan and Pelham-IV Teacher and Parent Rating Scale (SNAP-IV), and the function assessment. A total of 217 children and adolescents whose parents completed questionnaires during both the lockdown period and the pre-lockdown period were included. We used paired t-test and independent t test; to analyze the differences between the lockdown and pre-lockdown periods and between different subgroups.

RESULTS

The mean age of all participants was 11.87 ± 3.97 years, with 69.6% male. The results of CSHQ indicated that our participants had significantly increased total sleep time (p = 0.000), more sleep onset delay (p = 0.011), fewer sleep duration problems (p = 0.029), less parasomnia (p = 0.018), fewer sleep breathing problems (p = 0.028), and less daytime sleepiness (p = 0.000) during the lockdown, especially males and children. We observed trends but no significant changes of all participants in CBCL and SNAP during the lockdown. The change of the inattention index reached a significant level between children and adolescents (p ² = 0.017). The results of the functional assessment showed more interferences in home living (p = 0.021) of all participants, especially males (p ¹ = 0.002).

CONCLUSIONS

The lockdown significantly impacted children and adolescents' sleep and functioning. We also observed trends of increased emotion, behavior and inattention problems, and significantly increased interference in home living. Male gender and younger age may be associated factors for sleep and functional disturbances of the lockdown.