(Lancet Essay) Children and young people with long COVID: overlooked and neglected, 2024, Sanjana Jaidka and Eden Byrne

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Children and young people with long COVID: overlooked and neglected
Sanjana Jaidka; Eden Byrne

We are two young people aged 19 and 20 years in the UK who both developed long COVID more than 2 years ago. This resulted in us being housebound for over a year, essentially taking a year out of our lives in the hope of getting well enough to attend school and then university. This had a significant impact on our education and our ability to socialise as young adults. We experienced a wide variety of symptoms such as severe chronic fatigue, brain fog, and post-exertional malaise and have since had to navigate young adulthood with a chronic condition that has little research, information, and support available.

Link | Open Access with Registration (The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health)

 

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First, a substantial challenge many young people have encountered is being deemed too young to have long COVID, not only by the public but also their doctors, and and the assumption that we are making it up for attention. Many of us have been told that we are simply “unfit” from the pandemic’s wider effects, that we should “push through” our symptoms, discomfort, and illness, and that we should continue with sports and other activities. This makes us feel ignored and gaslighted about our symptoms. The lack of awareness and compassion affects our physical and mental health, escalating symptoms further, and is having a detrimental impact on our recovery. Critically, it can mean that some young people don’t trust their doctors to care for them appropriately, which can lead them to try dangerous remedies to alleviate symptoms, potentially causing damage and worsening their health. Such narratives around long COVID has a profound impact on young people’s wellbeing as they feel that what they are experiencing isn’t valid or that it is “all in their heads”. This creates the narrative that long COVID is not a physical condition and instead a mental condition, which makes people feel dismissed and creates the feeling that doctors don’t really care about them and their symptoms, making them less likely to go to the doctors.