ArticleScience advances2023
The youth mental health crisis: Quasi-experimental evidence on the role of school closures.
Article in Science advances, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 34 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Psychological distress among Japanese high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic: An energy landscape analysis.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Physical activity and mental health in children and adolescents during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: findings from the six-wave German COPSY study.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Article
- The unintended health effects of US COVID-19 lockdowns: a systematic review.Health affairs scholar · 2025Review
- Hospitalizations in adolescents with anorexia nervosa in Spain over two decades.Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- A never-ending story: The COVID-19 pandemic and the increase of hospital admissions for typical and atypical anorexia nervosa in children, adolescents and young adults in the post-pandemic era in Germany.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2024Article
- COVID-19 Pandemic School Disruptions and Acute Mental Health in Children and Adolescents.JAMA network open · 2024Observational
- Trajectories of mental health in children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: findings from the longitudinal COPSY study.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2024Article
- The Ethical Obligation for Research During Public Health Emergencies: Insights From the COVID-19 Pandemic.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2024Article
- Trends in Mental Wellbeing of US Children, 2019-2022: Erosion of Mental Health Continued in 2022.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Psychopathology, Protective Factors, and COVID-19 among Adolescents: A Structural Equation Model.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Acceptability of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions to Prevent the Risk of COVID-19 Infection in the United States.MDM policy & practiceArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the youth mental health crisis has reached unprecedented levels. To which extent school closures, one of the most heavily debated pandemic measures, have contributed to or even caused this crisis is largely unknown. We seek to narrow this blind spot, by combining quasi-experimental variation in school closure and reopening strategies across the German federal states at the onset of the pandemic with nationwide, population-based survey data on youth mental health and high-frequency data from the largest crisis helpline. We show that prolonged school closures led to a substantial deterioration in youth health-related quality of life, precipitating early signs of mental health problems. The effects were most severe among boys, younger adolescents, and families with limited living space. We further provide evidence that family problems are a major issue that adolescents were struggling with when denied access to school. Overall, school closures largely explain the deterioration of youth mental health over the first pandemic wave.
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