Examining changes in parent-reported child and adolescent mental health throughout the UK's first COVID-19 national lockdown.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the lives of children and adolescents, forcing them into periods of prolonged social isolation and time away from school. Understanding the psychological consequences of the UK's lockdown for children and adolescents, the associated risk factors, and how trajectories may vary for children and adolescents in different circumstances is essential so that the most vulnerable children and adolescents can be identified, and appropriate support can be implemented. METHODS: Participants were a convenience sample of parents and carers (n = 2,988) in the UK with children and adolescents aged between 4 and 16 years who completed an online survey about their child's mental health. Growth curve analysis was used to examine the changes in conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, and emotional symptoms between the end of March/beginning of April and July using data from monthly assessments over four months. Additionally, growth mixture modelling identified mental health trajectories for conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, and emotional symptoms separately, and subsequent regression models were used to estimate predictors of mental health trajectory membership. RESULTS: Overall levels of hyperactivity and conduct problems increased over time, whereas emotional symptoms remained relatively stable, though declined somewhat between June and July. Change over time varied according to child age, the presence of siblings, and with Special Educational Needs (SEN)/Neurodevelopmental Disorders (ND). Subsequent growth mixture modelling identified three, four, and five trajectories for hyperactivity/inattention, conduct problems, and emotional symptoms, respectively. Though many children maintained 'stable low' symptoms, others experienced elevated symptoms by July. These children were more likely to have a parent/carer with higher levels of psychological distress, to have SEN/ND, or to be younger in age. CONCLUSIONS: The findings support previous literature and highlight that certain risk factors were associated with poorer mental health trajectories for children and adolescents during the pandemic.

Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): A novel stimulus collection to induce epistemic emotions.

There has been considerable interest in empirical research on epistemic emotions, i.e., emotions related to knowledge-generating qualities of cognitive tasks and activities such as curiosity, interest, and surprise. One big challenge when studying epistemic emotions is systematically inducting these emotions in restricted experimental settings. The current study created a novel stimulus set called Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): a collection of 166 short magic trick video clips that aim to induce a variety of epistemic emotions. MagicCATs are freely available for research and can be used in a variety of ways to examine epistemic emotions. Rating data also support that the magic tricks elicit a variety of epistemic emotions with sufficient inter-stimulus variability, demonstrating good psychometric properties for their use in psychological experiments.

Memory of the U.K.'s 2016 EU referendum: The effects of valence on the long-term measures of a public event.

Emotional public events, relative to nonemotional ones, are typically remembered more accurately, more vividly, and with more confidence. However, the majority of previous studies investigating this have focused on negative public events and less is known about positive ones. The current study examined whether positive and negative public events were remembered in a similar manner by assessing individuals' memory for the time when they learned the results of the United Kingdom's 2016 Referendum on its European Union (EU) membership. Participants included U.K. participants who voted to leave the EU in the referendum and found the event highly positive, U.K. participants who voted to remain in the EU and found the event highly negative, and U.S. participants who did not vote and found the event neutral. Data from a total of 851 participants were assessed at four time points over the course of 16 months. Growth curve modeling showed that differences in memory between participants in the Remain group (who reported the highest levels of negative emotion) and those in the Leave group (who reported the highest levels of positive emotion) emerged over time. Specifically, Remain participants maintained higher levels of memory consistency than Leave participants, whereas Leave participants maintained higher levels of memory confidence than Remain participants. These results indicate that positive and negative public events are remembered differently, such that negative valence enhances memory accuracy, while positive valence results in overconfidence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Examining Children and adolescent mental health trajectories during the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings from a year of the Co-SPACE study.

Background: A major concern throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has been on young people's experiences with mental health. In this study we mapped children and adolescents' mental health trajectories over 13 months of the pandemic and examine whether family, peer, and individual-level factors were associated with trajectory membership. Methods: This study focuses on a sub-sample from the Co-SPACE study of 3322 children and adolescents (aged 4-16 years) for whom parents completed a survey at Time 0 and at least one follow-up survey between March 2020 and May 2021. We used growth mixture models to examine trajectories in emotional, conduct, and hyperactivity/inattention difficulties using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and multinomial logistic regression models to estimate factors associated with individual trajectory membership. Results: The average trend in young people's mental health appeared to follow changes in national guidelines regarding the pandemic. Distinct trends in GMM models highlighting individual differences showed that a 5-trajectory model best explained the changes in emotional problems whilst 4-trajectory models best explained variation in hyperactivity/inattention and conduct problems. While most young people followed low stable (62%-85%) or moderate stable (28%) symptom trajectories, 14%-31% experienced very high, high stable or increasing mental health difficulties. Young people following high stable trajectories were more likely to have special educational needs and/or neurodevelopmental disorders, parents reporting higher levels of distress and parent-child conflict, and were less likely to have at least one close friend. Conclusions: Most young people adapted well and experienced low stable symptoms, but nearly one third experienced high stable or increasing mental health difficulties. Young people with complex needs and parents with higher psychological distress were particularly vulnerable to high stable problems while those with positive peer relationships were less vulnerable. This study offers insight into potential factors that can be addressed using targeted interventions to improve the wellbeing of parents and young people in the event of future lockdowns and school closures.

How did the mental health symptoms of children and adolescents change over early lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK?

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused extensive disruption to the lives of children and young people. Understanding the psychological effects on children and young people, in the context of known risk factors is crucial to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. This study set out to explore how mental health symptoms in children and adolescents changed over a month of full lockdown in the United Kingdom in response to the pandemic. METHODS: UK-based parents and carers (n = 2673) of school-aged children and young people aged between 4 and 16 years completed an online survey about their child's mental health at two time points between March and May 2020, during early lockdown. The survey examined changes in emotional symptoms, conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention. RESULTS: The findings highlighted particular deteriorations in mental health symptoms among preadolescent children, which translated to a 10% increase in those meeting possible/probable caseness criteria for emotional symptoms, a 20% increase in hyperactivity/inattention, and a 35% increase in conduct problems. In contrast, changes among adolescents were smaller (4% and 8% increase for hyperactivity/inattention and conduct problems, respectively) with a small reduction in emotional symptoms (reflecting a 3% reduction in caseness). Overall, there were few differences in change in symptoms or caseness over time according to demographic characteristics, but children and young people in low income households and those with special educational needs and/or neurodevelopmental disorders exhibited elevated symptoms (and caseness) at both time points. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight important areas of concern in terms of the potential impact of the first national lockdown on children and young people's adjustment. Developing an understanding of who has been most severely affected by the pandemic, and in what ways, is crucial in order to target effective support where it is most needed.

Supporting Parents & Kids Through Lockdown Experiences (SPARKLE): A digital parenting support app implemented in an ongoing general population cohort study during the COVID-19 pandemic: A structured summary of a study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES: The COVID-19 related lockdowns and distancing measures have presented families with unprecedented challenges. A UK-wide cohort study tracking changes in families' mental health since early lockdown (Co-SPACE) found a significant rise in primary school-aged children's behaviour problems and associated family-related stress. Three-quarters of parents in Co-SPACE also reported wanting extra support. In SPARKLE, we will examine whether providing Co-SPACE families with a smartphone application delivering information and parenting support, Parent Positive, can reverse the negative effects of the pandemic on children and parents. The efficacy on child and parent outcomes and cost-effectiveness of Parent Positive will be examined. We will also test whether the effects are moderated by pre-existing levels of child conduct problems and usage of Parent Positive. Exploratory analyses will examine whether other baseline characteristics or lockdown circumstances moderate the effects of Parent Positive. TRIAL DESIGN: SPARKLE is a two-arm superiority parallel group randomised controlled trial embedded in an existing large UK-wide self-selected community cohort - Co-SPACE. Those who consent to SPARKLE will be randomised 1:1 to either Parent Positive or Follow-up As Usual (FAU). PARTICIPANTS: Co-SPACE (a UK-wide longitudinal cohort study) parents aged ≥18 who have children aged 4-10 years will be eligible for SPARKLE. INTERVENTION AND COMPARATOR: Parent Positive: is a digital public health intervention that can be delivered rapidly at scale to support parents in managing their children's behaviour to reduce conduct problems and levels of family conflict, which were exacerbated during the first lockdown, and which may increase further in future months as families need to cope with continuous uncertainty and further disruption to their daily lives. Co-designed with parents and based on decades of parenting research, Parent Positive consists of three elements: (i) Parenting Boosters: where advice, delivered in the form of narrated animations, videos, graphics and text is provided to help parents with eight common parenting challenges; (ii) Parenting Exchange: a facilitated parent-to-parent communication and peer support platform and; (iii) Parent Resources: giving access to carefully selected high-quality, evidence-based online parenting resources. Follow-up as Usual: FAU was selected as a comparator because the public health nature meant that an active comparator was not appropriate due to the pragmatic, rapid implementation of the trial. Individuals randomised to FAU will receive no intervention for the first two months while the data for baseline (T1), T2 and T3 are collected. They will then be given full access to the app until 30th November 2021. MAIN OUTCOMES: Outcome measures will be collected remotely through Qualtrics according to the Co-SPACE schedule at baseline (T1), which will be the Co-SPACE survey data obtained immediately prior to randomisation, and then at one month (T2) and two months (T3) post-randomisation. Measures will be collected to assess group differences in child and parent outcomes, costs and service utilisation, and adverse events. Usage of Parent Positive will also be tracked. The primary outcome is parent-reported child conduct problems at one-month post-randomisation measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire conduct problems subscale. RANDOMISATION: Enrolled participants will be allocated to Parent Positive or FAU at the ratio of 1:1 by simple randomisation using the Randomizer function within the Qualtrics programme. Neither blocking nor stratification will be used. BLINDING (MASKING): It is not possible to blind parents enrolled in the study and Qualtrics will automatically inform parents of their group allocation. Blinded members of the research team and the senior statistician will not be given access to the Qualtrics system or the data in order to remain blinded until after the analysis is complete. We do not anticipate any serious harms associated with taking part in the intervention, therefore there will be no need to unblind any blinded staff during the study. The junior statistician will be unblinded throughout. NUMBERS TO BE RANDOMISED (SAMPLE SIZE): A total of 616 will be recruited into the trial with 308 consenting parents randomised to each treatment arm. TRIAL STATUS: V1.0; 15.03.2021. Not yet recruiting. Anticipated start date: 1st April 2021. Anticipated end date for recruitment: 31st July 2021. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinicaltrial.gov: NCT04786080 . The trial was prospectively registered on 8 March 2021. FULL PROTOCOL: The full protocol is attached as an additional file, accessible from the Trials website (Additional file 1). In the interest in expediting dissemination of this material, the familiar formatting has been eliminated; this Letter serves as a summary of the key elements of the full protocol. The study protocol has been reported in accordance with the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Clinical Interventional Trials (SPIRIT) guidelines (Additional file 2).