“Rarely have America’s children suffered so many blows. And all at once, as during the pandemic’s last year.”
This is a line from an article published on 9 April in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Loneliness, Anxiety and Loss: the COVID Pandemic’s Terrible Toll on Kids.”
And the evidence continues to pile up. The Wall Street Journal writes, “A year of school shutdowns and family trauma leads to social isolation, stress and mental health issues.”
The article describes the effects on one young girl who had been getting consistent grades between A and B before the lockdowns. Forced to learn online at home, she ended up failing three classes. Then, last summer, her favorite activities of tennis and theater camps were canceled. She tried being part of a “pandemic pod,” the trend of small groups of students getting together to learn from a parent or teacher. But like many in these pods, this one fell apart.
When her school finally reopened last fall, like many others, many scared parents wouldn’t let their kids attend, and teachers are put in the frustrating position of trying to teach those in the classroom at the same time as those Zooming in remotely from home.
The Wall Street Journal article brings up a Harvard University study of 224 children, which revealed:
“About two thirds of [students learning online] had clinically significant symptoms of anxiety and depression, and the same number had behavioral problems such as hyperactivity and inattention between November 2020 and January 2021. This is a huge jump from the 30 percent with anxiety and depression symptoms and the 20 percent with behavioral problems before the pandemic.”
“The Damage May Be Permanent”
The WSJ article adds to the list of evidence of lockdown madness, including last 8 February when the New York Post published the article, “Lockdowns are breaking our kids – and the damage may be permanent.” The article included CDC data showing the mental health-related visits to hospital emergency rooms by kids went up by as much as one-third compared to the year prior.
Most of the mainstream media is too busy hyping spikes in virus variants, even though the overall death rate from COVID-19 has been declining since last fall while ignoring that millions of kids are suffering mental health consequences from the continued lockdowns.
Quoted was J.D. Friedman, a clinical psychologist in N.J., who said that for millions of kids who were already predisposed to mental health problems, the isolation and anxiety from lockdown restrictions “can absolutely tip the scales to full-blown pathology.”
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has been reporting for many months on the health traumas of kids during the extended lockdowns.
(See our 23 January article, “LOCKDOWNS CREATING CHILD OBESITY CRISIS,” our 12 January article, “STUDY: MASKS HARMING CHILDREN,” our 1 December article, “U.N. DIRECTORS: CLOSING SCHOOLS IS CREATING A “LOST GENERATION,” and our 17 November article, “SCHOOL SHUTDOWNS = CHILDREN SUFFERING.”)
