The Mental Health Impacts of COVID-19 on Pediatric Patients Following Recovery

According to data from American Academy of Pediatrics, over 3.1 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 by March 01 in the U.S. Although children experience lower rates of severe symptoms and have higher rates of asymptomatic infection as compared to adults, the mental health of children is more vulnerable than that of older individuals (Loades et al., 2020). Although some studies reported mental health outcomes of the general children during the pandemic (Duan et al., 2020), evidence regarding mental health of children infected by COVID-19 are largely understudied. Children or adolescents infected with COVID-19 may experience a series of physical symptoms—often including fever and respiratory distress. Previous studies showed that children might experience trauma, poor sleep, and withdrawn behaviors during the pandemic (Douglas et al., 2009). In the COVID-19 pandemic, cluster infection is more likely to occur within the families of infected children (Dong et al., 2020), which increases the risk of parental infections— possibly leading to a lack of mental and emotional support from the child's parents (Holmes et al., 2020). It is possible that children infected by COVID-19 may experience similar psychological problems. Due to the large number of infected children worldwide, it is urgent to know the emotional and mental health outcomes of infected children. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have yet reported the prevalence of symptoms associated with anxiety, depression, and PTSD among recovered, pediatric COVID-19 patients. There is also a dearth of information regarding the risk factors associated with mental distress among pediatric patients. It is urgent for researchers to clarify these issues to better understand the mechanisms by which mental health problems develop in pediatric patients (Prime et al., 2020). In this study, we examine the mental health outcomes of 38 pediatric patients who were admitted to the Wuhan Children's Hospital with cases of COVID-19.