Children’s mental health among top concerns of parents: Survey

A study by the Pew Research Center has found that parents are mostly concerned about their children’s mental health post pandemic.


In the wake of COVID pandemic, the mental health of people has suffered a lot. But whenever we talk about mental health we ignore its importance in kids.


Mental health crisis has affected us all equally. Hence inclusivity in terms of age is imperative in order to thwart the long term effect of adversity in kids who are in their growing years.

The report says that "four-in-ten U.S. parents with children younger than 18 say they are extremely or very worried that their children might struggle with anxiety or depression at some point."


This excludes the 36% of the parents who are 'somewhat' worried about it thus totalling it to more than 70%.


39% of the parents are also concerned about their kid in terms of bullying.


Bullying in schools and colleges is still underestimated though its impact on the kid is debilitating in nature. Bullying can lead to mental damage, and can even influence a child to kill himself or herself.


The Pew Research Center's analysis is based on 3,757 U.S. parents with children under age 18. The data was collected from a survey conducted from September 20 to October 2, 2022.

Pandemic has equally hit every country in the world. From the constant fear of contracting the virus, the remedy to which was unknown for almost a year to the uncertain future of schools and colleges when everything was shut down hurriedly, did put tremendous pressure on everyone alike.


The reason that we link mental health only to adults, is why we don’t see it in children.


Disruption in education, being confined indoors, sensing the fear in the environment, getting exposed to alarming data on the disease and most importantly having no scope of venting out the anxiety worsened things for kids during pandemic.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that kids between 10-19 year olds comprise 13% of the global burden of mental health disease.


The formative years of a person's life is exposed to several new things physically, socially and this takes a huge toll on the mental well being of the kid.


Adolescents with mental health conditions are particularly vulnerable to social exclusion, discrimination, stigma (affecting readiness to seek help), educational difficulties, risk-taking behaviours, physical ill-health and human rights violations, the WHO says.


While media influence and gender disparity plays crucial roles, other risk factors are peer pressure, and academic expectations from parents.


This confirms that kids are at a higher risk of mental health like the adults and need care for that.

Apart from mental health and bullying, the survey found other parental concerns like being kidnapped or abducted, getting beaten up or attacked, having problems with drugs or alcohol, getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant as a teen and getting in trouble with the police.


The study also found that mothers are more likely to be worried about most things than fathers.

About 88% of the parents are concerned with the financial life of their kids and want them to be financially independent and almost the same number of parents want their kids to have jobs or careers where they are happy.


"Roughly nine-in-ten parents say it’s extremely or very important to them that their children be financially independent when they are adults, and the same share say it’s equally important that their children have jobs or careers they enjoy," the report adds.

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