UK: Office of National Statistics: COVID-19 Schools Infection Survey, England: mental health and long COVID reports

COVID-19 Schools Infection Survey, England: mental health and long COVID, November to December 2021

"1.Main points

• 
  Since March 2020, 1.0% of primary school-aged pupils and 2.7% of secondary school-aged pupils met the Delphi criteria for having experienced long COVID lasting at least 12 weeks.
  
  
• "Loss of taste or smell" was the only symptom group where the prevalence was significantly higher for those who had received a positive coronavirus (COVID-19) test since March 2020 than those who hadn't, for both primary and secondary school-aged pupils aged under 16 years.
  
  
• Both primary and secondary school pupils who tested positive for COVID-19 showed no significant difference in the number presenting with a "probable mental disorder" compared with those without a positive test.
  
  
• Primary school pupils with long COVID (under the Delphi criteria) were significantly more likely to have a probable mental disorder (30.0%) than those without long COVID (7.7%); the trend was similar for secondary school pupils (22.6% compared with 13.6%), but this is not statistically significant."

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...entalhealthandlongcovidnovembertodecember2021

 

Dr. Deepti Gurdasani's commentary on these latest statistics.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1498393581366747143

 

Regrettably, there is also this commentary thread from a paediatric registrar and apparently anointed COVID expert. Evidently (from this and prior tweets) he is certain that "long COVID" (his quotes) is a mental health condition. Oh and also that 8% of all primary children and 13% of all secondary children in England have a mental health disorder. I would have thought that might represent a national crisis, but maybe that's just me.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1498312142012964866

 

On how mental health issues were assessed.

"The measurement approach taken by the COVID-19 Schools Infection Survey (SIS) is to use parent-reported measures for primary school-aged pupils and self-reported measures for secondary school-aged pupils. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire is used to define "probable", "possible" and "unlikely" mental disorders using a scoring algorithm."

"Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
SDQ is a brief behavioural screening questionnaire about 3 to 16-year-olds. It exists in several versions to meet the needs of researchers, clinicians and educationalists. The questionnaire asks about 25 attributes, some positive and others negative. These 25 items are divided between 5 scales:

• emotional symptoms (5 items)
  
  
• conduct problems (5 items)
  
  
• hyperactivity or inattention (5 items)
  
  
• peer relationship problems (5 items)
  
  
• prosocial behaviour (5 items)
  

The SDQ also includes an impact supplement which asks whether the respondent considers the child or young person to have difficulties, how long they have been present, and the extent to which they cause distress and impairment in functioning in everyday life.

Responses provided in the SDQ were combined using a diagnostic algorithm to indicate whether each child was unlikely, possibly or probably demonstrating a mental health condition in the following domains: emotional, behaviour and hyperactivity disorders. This algorithm combines data from all available informants and a disorder is considered probably present if the scores on the relevant symptom indicate the child is above the 95th percentile and the impact score is two or above according to either informant for emotional difficulties and conduct problems, or two informants if available for hyperactivity. A disorder is considered unlikely if the scores for conduct and emotion were three or below from all informants, and hyperactivity was five or below, plus impact scores were zero. A disorder was considered possible with intermediate scores. More detail on how the algorithm works can be found on the SDQ website.

For the Schools Infection Survey (SIS), we have adapted this methodology in light of only obtaining information from the pupil questionnaire for those aged 11 to 16 years, and only parent questionnaire information for those aged 4 to 11 years. The limitation of our approach is that it is not exactly comparable with other published mental health results, but it provides a measure against a validated methodology."

The SDQ can be found here, https://www.sdqinfo.org/a0.html. At a brief glance there are, unsurprisingly, many questions that a child with Long Covid might fall foul of.

 

Doctors are too willing to use a blood test as a yes or no answer but at least they are usually accurate, it is only edge cases where there is a problem.

Questionnaires, though, are given the same status when they are much less accurate because there is a strong risk of bias. They have to be seen as pointers towards an answer not something to be used without thought, interpretation and a certain amount of scepticism. The fist and foremost thing a doctor must consider is "How would someone with an undiagnosed physical disease answer these questions?"

Mental health questionnaires are designed to be used by the physically healthy. When medicine decided that mental health issues could cause physical illness it all went wrong for patients.

 

For anybody interested, this is the version of the questionnaire for those students aged 11-17 years old to fill out themselves.

 

teenagers in general are naturally prone to all kinds of mood changes part of growing up .to make any assumptions based on answers to the questionaire above is beyond bias ,stupidity seems to be a prerequisite when doing this kind of work .

 

COVID-19 Schools Infection Survey, England: long COVID and mental health, March 2022

Main points

• Nearly 1 in 50 (1.8%) primary school pupils (years from reception to year 6) and nearly 1 in 20 (4.8%) secondary school pupils (years 7 to 13) had experienced long COVID following their most recent COVID-19 infection.
  
  
• Significantly more secondary school pupils who reported having COVID-19 had experienced loss of smell or taste, cardiovascular symptoms, or systemic symptoms (fever or high temperature) than those who reported not having had COVID-19.
  
  
• Secondary school pupils in years 7 to 13 with long COVID were significantly more likely to have a probable mental disorder (28.1%) than those without long COVID (12.3%).
  

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...ovid19schoolsinfectionsurveyengland/march2022