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This issue’s research digest focuses on the emerging literature concerning the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the mental health of children, adolescents, young adults, and families. This is currently an area of great concern internationally, with those working in the field attempting to understand to what extent, and in what ways, the measures governments have put in place to curb the spread of coronavirus have affected mental health.
The sudden onset of the pandemic, and the fact that it has led to individuals having to isolate from one another, has ramifications for the type of research that has so far been possible. While some of the research published in this issue’s research digest may not be of the same quality as that of previous issues, it is impressive to consider how much has been achieved in such a short space of time and in such restricted conditions. Also pertinent is that different countries have experienced and managed the pandemic differently, and so there may be limits to how much we can learn from each other’s research at this point. At the time of writing, there is only one published study from the UK (Bignardi et al., 2021).
While the majority of studies summarised below have shown an increase in emotional and mental health difficulties during the pandemic, it is also interesting to note that this is not a universal finding, with two studies finding no change in the indices measured (Xiang et al., 2020; Isumi et al., 2020). Some studies included look at the effect of the pandemic in non-clinical populations of young people (for example, Zhou et al., 2020), while others examine how it may affect or exacerbate pre-existing conditions (Tanir et al., 2020). Some of the research included concerning the mental health impact on young adults has used interesting methodologies, such as examining the effect of housing conditions on emotional wellbeing (Amerio et al., 2020), or comparing students’ social networks before and during the pandemic (Elmer et a