‘Frightening’ statistics on children’s mental health revealed in MPs' cross-party report

The APPG’s latest report, The Covid generation: A mental health pandemic in the making, compiles the findings of 41 academics, charity sector and children’s play specialists.

It found that among five - to 10-year-olds - 14.4 per cent, or one in seven, had a probable mental disorder in 2020, an increase from 1 in 10 - 9.4 per cent - in 2017.

The report claims that unless the mental health crisis for children and young people exposed by the pandemic is addressed urgently by Government, it may become entrenched long after lockdowns are history.

Helen Clark, former MP and lead author of the report, told Nursery World that the research was ‘frightening’.

She said that the UK Government has adopted a ‘laid-back’ approach to children and young people’s mental health, in the face of evidence from the most authoritative academic and scientific sources.

Dr Adrian James, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists said in December that the pandemic could be the ‘greatest threat to mental health since the second world war’ with 1.5 million children predicted to need new or extra mental health support as a result of this crisis.

Mrs Clark referred to the mental health crisis as a ‘ticking time bomb’ and said, ‘I hope that the Government will find this work useful. All the mainstream media outlets have sung from the same hymn sheet for months now, with headlines presaging a forthcoming mental health catastrophe that should have alerted even Government in its most "boosterish" vein to take action.’

She added that the children’s commissioner had never been invited to speak at the regular national press conferences and despite multiple requests from MPs on all sides of the House, the Government has ‘yet to make’ a ministerial statement on a Mental Health Recovery Strategy, preferring to let ad hoc ‘announcements’ trickle out via Written Parliamentary Question responses.