A study today in
JAMA Network Open reveals that 10.5% of children and teens in a Chinese province during distance learning early in the COVID-19 pandemic reported psychological distress particularly among those who never wore a face covering or were physically active for less than a half hour a day.
A team led by researchers from Southern Medical University in Guangdong province analyzed data from an online survey of about 1.2 million randomly sampled school-aged children and adolescents from 21 cities receiving home-based instruction from Mar 8 to 30, 2020.
Of the 1,199,320 students, 126,355 (10.5%) said they had psychological distress, 51.5% of them girls. High school students, especially seniors, were at about 20% higher risk for poor well-being than those in elementary school (odds ratio [OR], 1.19).