COVID school closures caused rise in mental health ER admissions, suicidal ideas, Tablet Magazine article says

The lasting impacts the COVID-19 pandemic holds over America’s youth becomes clearer each day, presenting a crisis not limited to backsliding academic performance and declines in social capabilities with peers, but also in the alarmingly overlooked mental health plight bringing more children and adolescents to emergency rooms across the nation.

A Wednesday article from Tablet Magazine brought the issue to light, relaying Dr. Jeanne Noble’s concerns after she noticed a sharp uptick in both groups’ emergency room admissions citing “mental health distress” shortly after the pandemic first took the world by storm in 2020.

Noble, a University of California, San Francisco associate professor of emergency medicine, and director for UCSF’s emergency department’s COVID-19 response, according to the outlet, observed an alarming increase in suicidal ideation, as well as signs of cutting and eating disorders from children and adolescents and consequentially advocated for a “safe way to reopen schools.”

Article author Alex Gutentag delved deeper into Noble’s advocacy for children amid controversial and regressive pandemic-era school closings, noting her presentation at the Alameda County Public Health Department in California where she brought forth ER records to make the case for considering children’s mental health and asked, “What are you trying to do?” – READ MORE