A new study offers one of the clearest pictures yet of how pandemic-era school closures affected children’s mental health—and how much students improved once in-person learning resumed.
During the early months of COVID-19, many schools shut down classrooms and shifted abruptly to virtual learning to slow the spread of the virus. At the time, NPR reported extensively on growing concerns about isolation and mental health among children. “I was really shocked. I was really sad. I couldn’t see my friends,” one student, Canley Gift, told KQED’s Leslie McClurg in November 2020.
Now, researchers have followed up with data that quantifies those effects. The study, led by Dr. Rita Hamad of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examined mental health outcomes for more than 180,000 children across California. Because districts reopened on a staggered schedule, researchers were able to compare students who returned to the classroom with peers who remained remote.
Read more at NPR.
