A study of nearly 200,000 California schoolchildren found that their mental health had improved significantly after schools reopened for in-person learning in 2021, evidence that its authors said shows that the risks of prolonged shutdowns were greater than policymakers understood at the time.
The study, published recently in the journal Epidemiology, tracked medical claims for 185,735 privately insured children ages five to 18 in California over the months before and after their schools reopened.
Nine months after schools reopened, the probability that a child would be seen by a provider for a mental health condition was reduced by 43%, the authors found.Spending on mental health medications decreased by 7.5%, and spending on other treatments, like therapy, decreased by 10.6%.
The improvements were more striking among girls.
Rita Hamad, a social epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and a co-author of the study, said the findings sugges
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