Covid fallout ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ of poor mental health in children

Covid fallout ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ of poor mental health in children

The pandemic has worsened the mental health of millions of children worldwide, but this is “just the tip of the iceberg” of the problems faced by many young people around the world. This is the stark finding of the latest annual ‘State of the World’s Children’ report by Unicef which, for the first time, focuses on mental health. Worldwide, it is estimated that more than one in seven adolescents aged 10 to 19 – some 86 million in total – live with a diagnosed mental disorder, while just over 45,000 adolescents die from suicide every year. “Even [in the absence of] a pandemic, psychosocial distress and poor mental health afflict far too many children,” Henrietta Fore, executive director of Unicef, wrote in the report’s foreword. “In fact, the Covid-19 pandemic represents merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to poor mental health outcomes,” she said. “It is an iceberg we have been ignoring for far too long, and unless we act, it will continue to have disastrous results for children and societies long after the pandemic is over.” Yet – despite the scale of the issue – few countries have set aside funding to tackle deteriorating mental health,