Pediatric SARS-CoV-2 infection and development of anxiety and depression
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: It remains unclear whether emerging mental health concerns in children infected with SARS-CoV-2 are a direct result of the infection or due to the indirect effects of the pandemic. Therefore, we sought to assess the frequency of new diagnoses of anxiety and/or depression among children diagnosed with and without SARS-CoV-2 infection who were tested in pediatric emergency departments. Methods: A prospective cohort study with 6- and 12-month follow-ups was conducted across 14 Canadian tertiary-care pediatric emergency departments of the Pediatric Emergency Research Canada (PERC) network. The study included children aged <18 years who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection between August 2020 and February 2022. The primary outcome was the diagnosis of anxiety and/or depression reported during follow-up. The surveys incorporated a modified version of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) Long-COVID Pediatric Questionnaire. Results: Among the participants who were eligible for 6- and 12-month follow-ups, 64.7% (268/414) of SARS-CoV-2-positive and 71.9% (743/1,033) of SARS-CoV-2-negative participants completed follow-up at these time points, respectively. The median age was 7.0 [inter-quartile range (IQR): 5.0-11.0] years, and 54.2% (548/1,011) were male. New diagnoses of anxiety and/or depression reported on either survey did not differ significantly between test-positive (4.1%, 11/268) and test-negative (2.8%; 21/743) participants [difference = 1.3% (95% CI: -1.3 to 4.2)]. There was a higher prevalence of new diagnoses of anxiety and/or depression among SARS-CoV-2-negative participants aged ≥12 years relative to those aged <12 years [8.7% (13/149) vs. 1.3% (8/594); difference = 7.4%; 95% CI of the difference = 3.0-12.5], but not among SARS-CoV-2-positive participants [4.4% (2/45) vs. 4.0% (9/223); difference = 0.4%; 95% CI of the difference = -5.6 to 9.4]. At 6 or 12 months, SARS-CoV-2-positive participants were more likely to experience confusion and/or lack of concentration, abdominal pain, and insomnia. Conclusions: Although no association was found between SARS-CoV-2 infection and new diagnoses of anxiety and/or depression, SARS-CoV-2-positive participants were more likely to experience confusion/lack of concentration, abdominal pain, and insomnia. This finding, in the context of an increased prevalence of new diagnoses of anxiety and depression, underscores the impacts of societal changes on the mental health of children. Our finding that some non-specific symptoms were more frequently reported by SARS-CoV-2-positive participants emphasizes the need for further investigation of the underlying pathophysiologic mechanisms.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".