Mental health difficulties in young people have been on the rise for over a decade now. In the past three years, the number of children referred to emergency mental healthcare in England has soared by more than 50 per cent, according to the Royal College for Psychiatrists. Consistently, a recent analysis of data from Understanding Society: Covid-19 (see Hartas, 2024) revealed that Covid-19 has had a disproportionate impact on vulnerable young people’s mental health, due to social isolation, racial marginalisation, rising levels of poverty and cuts in public services.

This blog post focuses on young carers, minority ethnic, young women and young people living in poverty. Young carers’ coping mechanisms were challenged through intensive caring due to a combination of school closures, Covid-related illness in the family, home schooling and having younger siblings at home who might have required care. The curtailing of external agency support and services also reduced wellbeing a year into the pandemic.

Black and mixed-race young people were also more likely to report reduced wellbeing during the pandemic than their White peers. The impact of the pandemic on minority ethnic young people was exacerbated due to a combination of increased Covid-related illness in the family, low-paid jobs, and loss of income and employment opportunities in the household, the experience of racial microaggressions and systemic racism, potentially shattering their sense of trust in others.

‘The impact of the pandemic on minority ethnic young people was exacerbated due to a combination of increased Covid-related illness in the family, low-paid jobs, and loss of income and employment opportunities in the household.’

Although there has been a spike in mental ill health and self-harm in adolescent girls pre-pandemic (see for example Patalay & Fitzsimons, 2020; Rodway et al., 2020), this trend intensified during Covid-19 with more young women than men reporting emotional difficulties such as anxiety, depression and self-harm, reflecting the broader circumstances in their life (Hartas, 2024). As welfare structures have been systematically dismantled and with the rise of an individualised, de-politicised feminism, there has been a proliferation of discourses on self-expression and self-belief amid rising gender inequality and everyday sexism. Young women’s mental health has been deteriorating because the circumstances that surround their life have remained unchanged.

Young people in jobless households were more likely to report mental health difficulties a year into the pandemic, when the financial strain on their families due to loss of income and employment opportunities was keenly felt. And this is despite their efforts to contextualise the challenges, adapt and grow in a changed world.

The pandemic laid bare significant inequalities with young people in certain demographic groups faring worse than others. Covid-19 emerged at a time when the United Kingdom had experienced over a decade of austerity policies, resulting in underfunded social and children’s services, healthcare and education. In the absence of the state as a source of support, families and communities took the strain. Recent research by the Rowntree Foundation revealed that the number of destitute households increased by 64 per cent between 2019 and 2022, while the number of children living in these households has almost doubled (Fitzpatrick et al., 2023). During this time, the number of children and young people not having their basic needs met (that is, accessing basic food and clothing, keeping dry and warm) has tripled, approaching one million.

‘The number of children and young people not having their basic needs met (that is, accessing basic food and clothing, keeping dry and warm) has tripled, approaching one million.’

For many young people, vulnerability and resilience were shifted by their economic realities. Covid-19 has been described as an illness of social and economic inequality (Mezzina et al., 2022). Horton (2020) best articulated this by coining the term ‘syndemic’ (a combination of systemic and pandemic), to stress that the consequences of a disease were determined and exacerbated by social and material factors. Clearly, we were not all in this together.

This blog post is based on the article ‘Mental health trajectories in adolescents during Covid-19: “Are we all in this together?”’ by Dimitra Hartas, published in the British Educational Research Journal.

References

Fitzpatrick, S., Bramley, G., Treanor, M., Blenkinsopp, J., McIntyre, J., Johnsen, S., & McMordie, L. (2023). Destitution in the UK 2023. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. https://www.jrf.org.uk/deep-poverty-and-destitution/destitution-in-the-uk-2023

Hartas, D. (2024). Mental health trajectories in adolescents during Covid-19: ‘Are we all in this together?’. British Educational Research Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3982

Horton, R. (2020). Offline: Covid-19 is not a pandemic. Lancet, 396(10255), 874. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32000-6 

Mezzina, R., Gopikumar, V., Jenkins, J., Saraceno, B., & Sashidharan, S. P. (2022). Social vulnerability and mental health inequalities in the ‘Syndemic’: Call for action. Frontier Psychiatry, 13, 894370. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.894370

Patalay, P., & Fitzsimons, E. (2020). Mental ill-health at age 17 in the UK: Prevalence of and inequalities in psychological distress, self-harm and attempted suicide. Centre for Longitudinal Studies.

Rodway, C., Tham, S-G., Ibrahim, S., Turnbull, P., Kapur, N., & Appleby, L. (2020). Children and young people who die by suicide: Childhood-related antecedents, gender differences and service contact. BJPsych Open, 6(3), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2020.33