SynthesisJournal of affective disorders2021
Prevalence of mental health problems among children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Journal of affective disorders, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 258 papers, 17 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
258 citing papers in PubMed, 17 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 506 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Association between Academic Stress and Problematic Internet Use among Adolescents: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2025Pooled it
- Pooled it
- An umbrella review of the prevalence of depression during the COVID-19 pandemic: Call to action for post-COVID-19 at the global level.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- Estimation of the prevalence of anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic: A meta-analysis of meta-analyses.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- Self-injury and suicide among people living with HIV/AIDS in China: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- School Refusal in Youth: A Systematic Review of Ecological Factors.Child psychiatry and human development · 2024Pooled it
- Evidence linking COVID-19 and the health/well-being of children and adolescents: an umbrella review.BMC medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Prevalence of sleep disturbances in children and adolescents during COVID-19 pandemic: a meta-analysis and systematic review of epidemiological surveys.Translational psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Secondary school teachers' experiences of supporting students with mental health issues: a systematic review and meta-aggregation of qualitative studies.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Optimal cut-offs of depression screening tools during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.BMC psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Relationship between depression and quality of life among students: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2023Pooled it
- COVID-19 and common mental health symptoms in the early phase of the pandemic: An umbrella review of the evidence.PLoS medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Internalizing and externalizing symptoms in children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic mixed studies review.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Pooled it
- Mental health and quality of life in children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review of longitudinal studies.Frontiers in public health · 2023Pooled it
- The Mental Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Older Adults in China: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Global burden of mental health problems among children and adolescents during COVID-19 pandemic: An umbrella review.Psychiatry research · 2022Pooled it
- Relationship between Mental Health and Emotional Eating during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review.Nutrients · 2022Pooled it
- Effects of a school-based physical activity intervention on mental health indicators in a sample of Brazilian adolescents: a cluster randomized controlled trial.BMC public health · 2025Trial
- Using the Internet to Cope With Emotional Problems: The Role of Preference of Online Communication in Adolescents Across 18 Countries.Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2026Article
- Guilt Proneness and Shame Proneness Differentially Relate to Sex Disparity in Depression Among Adolescents in China: A Longitudinal Serial Mediation Analysis.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Article
198 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThis systematic review and meta-analysis examined the prevalence of depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, and posttraumatic stress symptoms among children and adolescents during global COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 to 2020, and the potential modifying effects of age and gender.
methodsA literature search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and two Chinese academic databases (China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Wanfang) for studies published from December 2019 to September 2020 that reported the prevalence of above mental health problems among children and adolescents. Random-effects meta-analyses were used to estimate the pooled prevalence.
resultsTwenty-three studies (21 cross-sectional studies and 2 longitudinal studies) from two countries (i.e., China and Turkey) with 57,927 children and adolescents were identified. Depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, and posttraumatic stress symptoms were assessed in 12, 13, 2, and 2 studies, respectively. Meta-analysis of results from these studies showed that the pooled prevalence of depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, and posttraumatic stress symptoms were 29% (95%CI: 17%, 40%), 26% (95%CI: 16%, 35%), 44% (95%CI: 21%, 68%), and 48% (95%CI: -0.25, 1.21), respectively. The subgroup meta-analysis revealed that adolescents and females exhibited higher prevalence of depression and anxiety compared to children and males, respectively. LIMITATIONS: All studies in meta-analysis were from China limited the generalizability of our findings.
conclusionsEarly evidence highlights the high prevalence of mental health problems among children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among female and adolescents. Studies investigating the mental health of children and adolescents from countries other than China are urgently needed.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.