School Reopenings Tied to Better Mental Health for Kids

A new study suggests that the mental health of California children was boosted significantly after schools resumed in-person classes in 2021, adding weight to the debate over the costs of prolonged pandemic school closures, per the New York Times. Researchers analyzed medical claims for nearly 186,000 privately insured children ages 5 to 18, finding that, nine months after schools reopened, the likelihood of a child receiving mental health care dropped by 43%.

Spending on mental health medications for conditions like depression, anxiety, and ADHD also fell, by 7.5%, while spending on therapy and similar treatments declined by 10.6%. The improvements were especially pronounced among girls. The study's authors argue that policymakers in California failed to fully weigh the social and psychological toll on children. Rita Hamad, a Harvard public health researcher and study co-author, said the research highlights risks that may have been underappreciated at the time.

Hamad noted that her team's data only covers children with private insurance, meaning the results could understate the problem. A follow-up study will look at Medicaid recipients. The study, published in the journal Epidemiology, attempts to isolate the effect of school closures by taking advantage of California's staggered school-reopening timeline. However, some outside experts caution that other factors, such as the rollout of vaccines and a general easing of pandemic fears, could also have contributed to the improvements. "The findings offer lessons for future public health emergencies and provide insight into why mental health worsened for children during the pandemic," Hamad says in a release.