ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a devastating impact on youth mental health concerns, with rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidality doubling.1 With 1 in 5 youth now experiencing a mental health disorder, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Children's Hospital Association, and the US Surgeon General have all declared a national state of emergency in child and adolescent mental health.2,3 Although youth mental health has declined overall since the onset of the pandemic, racial minority youth have been disproportionately negatively impacted. Unfortunately, racial disparities in youth mental health have been a long-standing concern, and the impact of COVID-19 has only served to worsen this gap.2 This is consistent with broader population health trends observed throughout the pandemic across age groups, where a higher proportion of racial and ethnic minorities have experienced poverty, violence, educational and vocational disruptions, and poorer health outcomes, including COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths.3,4.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Child Health , Healthcare Disparities , Mental Health , Racial Groups , Child Psychiatry/statistics & numerical data , Mental Health/statistics & numerical data , Child Health/statistics & numerical data , COVID-19/epidemiology , Racism/statistics & numerical data , Healthcare Disparities/statistics & numerical data , Humans , Child , Adolescent , Child Development , Racial Groups/statistics & numerical dataABSTRACT
Behavioral problems, such as noncompliance and aggression, are a common referral reason to mental health services for young children. Behavioral parent training (BPT) is the leading intervention for addressing behavioral problems and leads to benefits in a variety of parental factors (e.g., parenting efficacy and parenting stress). While the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically shifted service delivery toward telehealth services, limited work has evaluated the effectiveness of BPT when delivered in a brief, group format through telehealth. The current retrospective chart review study evaluated the engagement to and preliminary effectiveness of a brief version of BPT delivered through telehealth to 64 families of 3- to 7-year-olds referred for behavioral problems. Families attended an average of 4.55 of 6 sessions and most families had two caregivers who engaged in the intervention. Significant reductions in caregivers' report of children's behavioral problems and improvements in parenting self-efficacy resulted. Future research and clinical implications are discussed.