Evaluating Equity-Focused Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on Childhood and Youth Mental Health in Canada: A novel application of spatial causal inference methods

Kuan Liu, Dalla Lana School of Public Health; Geoffrey Anderson, Dalla Lana School of Public Health; Jennifer Jenkins, Temerty Faculty of Medicine; Beverley Essue, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

It is now widely understood that the pandemic precipitated an unprecedented mental health crisis among children and youth both in Canada and around the world. However, there is little evidence on the long-term impact that pandemic containment measures have had on childhood and youth mental health. Our study aims to evaluate changes in the mental health of children and youth in Canada pre- and post-pandemic, the potential causal role that education disruption played, and identify who were most affected. To that end, we analyze Ontario electronic health records data linked with administrative population data on demographic and socioeconomic variables, to: i) characterize changes in mental health outcomes among school-aged children and youth from before the pandemic to during/after the pandemic, ii) estimate the role that education disruption played on the decline of the mental health, and iii) identify significant unexplained disparities in adverse mental health outcomes between adjacent census tracts within Ontario.

Evaluating the long-term causal impact and the dynamic role of neighbourhood social vulnerability are challenging and require a novel interdisciplinary approach. Our research team brings diverse expertise spanning biostatistics, psychopathology, health services research and epidemiology. Our study fits under the pandemic recovery theme. It addresses the pressing need to understand the long-lasting consequences of the pandemic at both community and population levels to infer post-pandemic mental health services needs and to inform recovery intervention and policies to improve health for all.