Breakdown of family relationships during COVID-19 pandemic:

Children’s mental health is in crisis

Do Thi Tue Minh - Kayla

Section 4

I. Introduction
A. Research Question: How have familial issues worsened during the pandemic and how has this
seriously impacted the mental health of children?  
B. Background
 Social distancing regulations from early 2020 was implemented all over the world to
minimize the infection rate of Covid-19.
 Children suffered from substantial life disruptions including social isolation, school
cancellations, missed milestones, and family hardship.
 With those regulations, family is the only thing that children be with every day.
 Adolescents tend to spend less time with family; however, Covid-19 has changed completely
this pattern. Family during Covid-19 has become the most directly impactors to the
behaviors of children as they have to facing their family members most of time.
 Most parents confirmed that worries about employment, financial strains, social isolation
and negative emotional experiences affected their parenting (Gadermann & Thomson,
2021).
 The mental health illnesses are not only stay in Covid-19 pandemic period, but it also has
long-lived strong impacts to the youth’s life. (Maddy Savage, 2020)
C. Significance: A professor in psychiatry at the University of British Columbia concluded that about
one tenth unlucky percentage of people are unable to return to the normal life after being
pandemic mental health influenced. The mental health illnesses caused by Covid-19 are likely to
leave stronger long-lived impacts on individuals than physical health impacts, recently warned in
British Medical Journal.
D. Thesis: This paper will compare the state of family relationships before and during Covid-19 and
clarify how those worsened factors has been negative affected family’s mental health, especially
children’s during and after Covid-19.
II. Discussion
A. How have familial issues worsened? And their impacts on children’s mental health
1. Interparental conflicts
- Marital conflicts on the rise since Covid-19 all over the world.
- A spike in searches for divorcing online. 122% increases in demand for divorces for Leading
British Law firm Stewards. Same pattern for China, UK, the US, and China. (Maddy, 2020)
- Money, domestic abuse, mental health problems, disproportionate share of housework and
childcare are main reasons. (Maddy, 2020)
- The increasing rate of separated parents leads to the increasing number of mental health
illnesses children as family with full parents used to be their shelter.
- Positive parental marriage quality, for example, leads to good psychological well-being in
children, whereas poor parental marital quality leads to low psychological well-being in
children (Wahyuningsih et al., 2020).
- Children’s behaviors: Iqra et. al., 2021
 + Engage in similar harmful activities in the future
+ Impact on psychological distress along with academic and social adjustments
+ No direct relation with suicidal attempts, but Loneliness, life dissatisfactions
2. Adults – children relationship and parenting methods
- Financial concerns, work – life unbalance, childcare work, social isolation causes changes in
the way parents expresses their feelings to children. Online learning, long screen time, social
distancing, unable to meet friends, have to meet family members all the time changes how
children behave with their parents. => Relationship worsened significantly
- Parenting has long been shown to have an essential "scaffolding" role in children's and
teenagers' mental health (Cassidy, 1994; Field, 1994; Marie B. H. Yap, Allen, & Sheeber,
2007),
- Parent stress on the rise
- Positive parenting vs Negative parenting (Roos et. al., 2021)
- COVID-19's effects on parents and children are anticipated to differ depending on the ages
and developmental stages of the children. (Bate, 2021)
- Emotional and Behaviors of children and parents: (Bate, 2021; Feinberg, 2021; Iraklis
Grigoropoulos, 2021)
+ Parents: role changing (Iraklis Grigoropoulos, 2021) , negative expression
+ Children: symptoms, internalizing end externalizing problems
+ Higher parental covid-19 pandemic stress, mental problems, poor parenting behaviors ->
higher children mental health illnesses
- Interventions: Bate, 2021
3. The loss of family members
- Heartbreaking number of children lost parent during covid 19: Slomski, 2021; Santos et.al.,
2021
- Fear of losing family member -> Anxiety, worries: Suffren et. al., 2021

B. Case study: Smith family (Singh & Sim, 2021)

1. Unsafe uncertainty
2. Remain problems
III. Conclusion
A. Summary:
1. Family has major impact on how children behave, and their mental health
2. Mental health illnesses in children have long-lived impacts
3. Parents stress, and worsened parenting can be thought as significant factor affecting children
mental health.
4. Losing a family member is heartbreaking -> Trauma and mental health impacted

B. Suggestions or Interventions:
1. What can be done by parents when children have symptoms of self-harm, depression, anxiety?
2. What to do to improve child-parent relationship
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