ArticleChild and adolescent psychiatry and mental health2024
Antidepressant treatment initiation among children and adolescents with acute versus long COVID: a large retrospective cohort study.
Article in Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Associations of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and long COVID risk in patients with depression: a retrospective cohort study.Infection · 2026Article
- Healthcare utilization patterns and medication burden in post-COVID syndrome: a cross-sectional analysis reveals four phenotypes.Frontiers in health services · 2026Article
- Child and adolescent mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic: an overview of key findings from a thematic series.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2025Review
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3 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundChild and adolescent antidepressant use increased post-pandemic, but it is unknown if this disproportionally affected those who develop post-acute sequelae of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID) or long COVID. This study compared the risk of antidepressant initiation among children and adolescents with long COVID with those who had COVID but did not have evidence of long COVID.
methodsOur retrospective cohort study of children and adolescents aged 3-17 years at the first evidence of COVID or long COVID from October 1, 2021 through April 4, 2022 was conducted within Komodo's Healthcare Map
resultsOur child and adolescent sample included 18 274 with COVID and 9137 with long COVID. Compared with those with COVID, a larger proportion of long COVID children and adolescents had psychiatric disorders, psychotropic use, medical comorbidities, were previously hospitalized, or visited the emergency department. In the propensity score-adjusted analysis, the long COVID group had a statistically significant higher risk of antidepressant initiation relative to the COVID comparator (adjusted-RR: 1.40, 95% CI = 1.20, 1.62). Our findings were robust across sensitivity analyses.
conclusionsThe increased risk of antidepressant initiation following long COVID warrants further study to better understand the underlying reasons for this higher risk. Emerging evidence of long COVID's impact on child mental health has important implications for prevention and early interventions.
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