Study finds alarming rates of anxiety and depression in children with long COVID

[Dolphin]

[Neither the paper nor even the title of the paper seems to be available yet based on a quick search]

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1084605

News Release 20-May-2025
Study finds alarming rates of anxiety and depression in children with long COVID

Kennedy Krieger Institute research shows how long COVID is mentally impacting pediatric patients

Peer-Reviewed Publication
Kennedy Krieger Institute


BALTIMORE, May 19, 2025— A new study from Kennedy Krieger Institute is calling attention to an emerging mental health crisis among children with long COVID. Researchers found that nearly 40% of pediatric patients with long COVID reported feeling significant symptoms of anxiety or depression.

The study included 139 patients evaluated at Kennedy Krieger’s Pediatric Post-COVID-19 Rehabilitation Clinic. Clinicians used mental health screening surveys to assess symptoms reported by the patients. The screenings also included measures of key aspects of quality of life including: physical functioning, emotional functioning, social functioning, and school functioning. More than 1 in 3 children reported that they were experiencing elevated symptoms of anxiety or depression (i.e. worry, sleep problems, and mood irritability).

Dr. Laura Malone, director of the clinic and co-investigator in this research, says half of these children had no prior mental health concerns or diagnosis.

“Long COVID is a complex condition,” said Malone. “We’re seeing children and teens who were doing well before their COVID infection now struggling to attend school, socialize, or even enjoy basic activities.”

Key findings include:

• 1 in 4 children had new anxiety symptoms, and 1 in 7 had new depressive symptoms, despite no prior diagnosis—a sign long COVID is triggering new mental health challenges.
• On average, children reported a quality of life similar to peers with cancer or cystic fibrosis, underscoring the severe functional impact of the condition.
• The strongest predictor of poor quality of life was a “sense of ineffectiveness,” like feeling unable to succeed in life or enjoy activities.

“These children are losing confidence in themselves and their ability to participate in daily life,” said Dr. Malone. “That loss of function can be just as devastating as the physical symptoms. It is important to identify and treat both to improve quality of life for children with long COVID.”

While previous studies have hinted at long COVID’s mental health toll, this is one of the first to use standardized, validated measures of mental health issues in a pediatric long COVID population. The study also warns that traditional screening tools may not capture the full picture, since physical symptoms of long COVID (like fatigue or dizziness) can overlap with those of anxiety or depression.

Researchers at Kennedy Krieger urge healthcare providers to integrate routine mental health screening into care for children with long COVID. Early identification could mean faster access to the right interventions, therefore helping kids recover more quickly.

Visit here for more information about the Pediatric Long COVID clinic and ongoing research at Kennedy Krieger Institute.

###

About Kennedy Krieger Institute
Kennedy Krieger Institute, an internationally known, non-profit organization located in the greater Baltimore/Washington, D.C. region, transforms the lives of nearly 30,000 individuals a year through inpatient and outpatient medical, behavioral health and wellness therapies, home and community services, school-based programs, training and education for professionals and advocacy. Kennedy Krieger provides a wide range of services for children, adolescents and adults with diseases, disorders or injuries that impact the nervous system, ranging from mild to severe. The Institute is home to a team of investigators who contribute to the understanding of how disorders develop, while at the same time pioneer new interventions and methods of early diagnosis, prevention and treatment. Visit www.kennedykrieger.org/ for more information about Kennedy Krieger.

Journal
Journal of Psychology

Disclaimer: AAAS and E

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Study finds alarming rates of anxiety and depression in children with long COVID

What is a study revealed alarming rates of anxiety and depression in children with disabling arthritis or Crohn's disease? - which there of course are.

 

[Utsikt]

These children are losing confidence in themselves and their ability to participate in daily life,” said Dr. Malone. “That loss of function can be just as devastating as the physical symptoms. It is important to identify and treat both to improve quality of life for children with long COVID.”

I’m pretty sure the loss of function is caused by the physical symptoms!

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I’m pretty sure the loss of function is caused by the physical symptoms!

And treating the one should deal with the other - if there only was such a treatment.

 

[rvallee]

“These children are losing confidence in themselves and their ability to participate in daily life,” said Dr. Malone. “That loss of function can be just as devastating as the physical symptoms.

Where that does doctor think the loss of function come from, if not the physical symptoms? Literally: you fix the physical symptoms, you fix the loss of function, and the "anxiety" and "depression" also disappear because they are overlapping questions.

Ugh. Watching medicine handle this is complete reverse competence porn. Kind of like the scientists in Prometheus.

 

[rvallee]

The study also warns that traditional screening tools may not capture the full picture, since physical symptoms of long COVID (like fatigue or dizziness) can overlap with those of anxiety or depression.

They do not. But the questionnaires they use sure do!

It's been 5 freaking years! It's as if they're all incapable of learning anything. OK not all of them, just 90-95% of them.

 

[Utsikt]

They do not. But the questions they use sure do!

I was pretty fatigued when I was depressed before getting sick, and so were friends with depression. But fatigue is so common, that it can’t be considered a marker for depression alone, which is what they try to do..

 

[alex3619]

Let me run a thought experiment, based in part on my own comments over the years, and the comments I have read from many patients.

What if you were young and healthy? Suddenly you are sick and cannot do much. Adults including doctors are scaring the heck out of you and you are not feeling good about it. All their treatments and solutions fail. You are cut off from your friends, and school or work. Your sports and hobbies are gone, or mostly gone. Your own family does not understand what you are going through. Heck, YOU don't understand what you are going through. Even walking a short distance is very unpleasant and disabling. Your brain is not working right. Your body is not working right. You are sleeping badly. Foods you used to love make you sick.

Exhaustion from the disease might be flagged as depression, but even you have depression ... under these circumstances depression should be common. I argue it is much less common than should be expected though this is personal opinion.

Your doctors and even everyday activities are bewildering, painful or terrifying. Being anxious about all of these things is a survival feature. Its normal.

The final test will come when we finally have a treatment or cure. I suspect, as do others here, that most patients will find their anxiety and depression are gone. I also suspect that many do not have depression, in particular, just share a few symptoms. That doctors still have to use questionnaires to identify depression underscores how unreliable the diagnosis is.

The ketogenic diet is eliminating many cases of anxiety and depression in clinical trials. It alters how the brain works. Some can also do this by eliminating ultra processed foods, though I have not read any studies showing that, for me the evidence is mostly anecdotal. Its almost certain that fixing our brain function will fix many of our cognitive dysfunctions. Successfully treating many physical diseases, including brain diseases, would I suspect improve the outlook of almost anyone. How could it be otherwise except in uncommon cases like for some people who had these problems before Covid or some other trigger mechanism?

 

[BrightCandle]

Let me run a thought experiment

Sadly the most common way this is going down for children is so much worse than lacking treatment. Their doctors gaslight them and say its just anxiety or depression, their parents get told they have to force the child to play and go to school and the routine will do them good. The school will force them to do PE because it helps with depression and every crash the child is off will add to the evidence the school uses to start proceedings for truancy. The school will then start sending the police around, fine the parents and then social services gets involved and may remove the child from their parents.

Adults with ME/CFS and/or Long Covid have some amount of autonomy, we can get some benefits or we have family that takes us in and while the people in our lives might not accept our disease they can't really use the state against us to anywhere near the same extent. Children are at the mercy of their parents understanding that every authority is wrong and is willing to fight it in court against the state. Most parents aren't there, wont understand for months or years. If children aren't anxious and depressed after being forced to get worse and worse by their parents I would say they seem maladapted to the level of societal abuse occurring to them.

 

[Sean]

Where that does doctor think the loss of function come from, if not the physical symptoms? Literally: you fix the physical symptoms, you fix the loss of function, and the "anxiety" and "depression" also disappear because they are overlapping questions.

Literally the whole point of science, including medical science, is to figure out causal pathways – what causes what, and how. Every tool and technique science uses is to serve that goal.

Trying to treat something without a clear understanding of relationship between cause and effect is worse than pointless, it is highly misleading and dangerous.

It is also the basic underlying story of the persistent failure of psychosomatics. Without demonstrated causality they have nothing but sophistry and naked power grabs.

What if you were young and healthy? Suddenly you are sick and cannot do much. Adults including doctors are scaring the heck out of you and you are not feeling good about it. All their treatments and solutions fail. You are cut off from your friends, and school or work. Your sports and hobbies are gone, or mostly gone. Your own family does not understand what you are going through. Heck, YOU don't understand what you are going through. Even walking a short distance is very unpleasant and disabling. Your brain is not working right. Your body is not working right. You are sleeping badly. Foods you used to love make you sick.

Add in sometimes extreme abuse and victim blaming from the very authorities supposed to be helping you, and the very critical issue of poverty levels of lost financial and material resources, with no relief in sight for any of this, and it is hard to imagine a more stress and despair inducing set of circumstances outside of front lines in war zones. And most wars don't go on for decades, let alone whole lives.

 

[Utsikt]

It’s reasonable to become depressed from the horrors that you often experience when living with ME/CFS. But those are probably mostly secondary effects of either e.g. the illness, the completely broken system, or outright abuse.

Yet most tend to treat it as something treatable in itself. Which it might be, under ideal circumstances. But it’s difficult to heal from trauma when the trauma is still ongoing.

My guess is that we’re going to see a lot of PTSD once we find a cure.

 

[Chestnut tree]

Sadly the most common way this is going down for children is so much worse than lacking treatment. Their doctors gaslight them and say its just anxiety or depression, their parents get told they have to force the child to play and go to school and the routine will do them good. The school will force them to do PE because it helps with depression and every crash the child is off will add to the evidence the school uses to start proceedings for truancy. The school will then start sending the police around, fine the parents and then social services gets involved and may remove the child from their parents.

Adults with ME/CFS and/or Long Covid have some amount of autonomy, we can get some benefits or we have family that takes us in and while the people in our lives might not accept our disease they can't really use the state against us to anywhere near the same extent. Children are at the mercy of their parents understanding that every authority is wrong and is willing to fight it in court against the state. Most parents aren't there, wont understand for months or years. If children aren't anxious and depressed after being forced to get worse and worse by their parents I would say they seem maladapted to the level of societal abuse occurring to them.

Sadly yes, and my heart hurts for children that are treated this way. And also for the parents that are treated as if they are the abusers when they are trying to protect their child.

 

[bobbler]

Sadly the most common way this is going down for children is so much worse than lacking treatment. Their doctors gaslight them and say its just anxiety or depression, their parents get told they have to force the child to play and go to school and the routine will do them good. The school will force them to do PE because it helps with depression and every crash the child is off will add to the evidence the school uses to start proceedings for truancy. The school will then start sending the police around, fine the parents and then social services gets involved and may remove the child from their parents.

Adults with ME/CFS and/or Long Covid have some amount of autonomy, we can get some benefits or we have family that takes us in and while the people in our lives might not accept our disease they can't really use the state against us to anywhere near the same extent. Children are at the mercy of their parents understanding that every authority is wrong and is willing to fight it in court against the state. Most parents aren't there, wont understand for months or years. If children aren't anxious and depressed after being forced to get worse and worse by their parents I would say they seem maladapted to the level of societal abuse occurring to them.

This is the harm that these people need to start understanding

this tosh bs attitude and mindset that only developed after 2000 that psychologising can’t be dangerous and harmful needs to stop in both these subjects of medicine (never wanted to change) and psychology (wrong people allowed to take over as bps got more power)

it’s wrong and done because it is easy and convenient and irresponsible- imagine if medicine or engineering could just ‘focus on the positives’ and not have to critique their own work or suggestions but just make up ideas and finesse them but never have to question their own premise.

and they all pretend they are blind to their blindness - it’s outrageous trapping so many humans in this hellish game of dumping pot. And presumption.

 

[bobbler]

It’s reasonable to become depressed from the horrors that you often experience when living with ME/CFS. But those are probably mostly secondary effects of either e.g. the illness, the completely broken system, or outright abuse.

Yet most tend to treat it as something treatable in itself. Which it might be, under ideal circumstances. But it’s difficult to heal from trauma when the trauma is still ongoing.

My guess is that we’re going to see a lot of PTSD once we find a cure.

Which we have to underline is a very different type of depression in itself to their dumping pot version - with almost the opposite world change and approach needed to bettering this (validation and making sure systems are set up to give people a life chance by ‘getting the physical limitations’ so people aren’t arguing fir who they are on a minute by minute micro aggression front) to the ‘anxiety and depression’ they are trying to allay it to.

 

[rvallee]

I was pretty fatigued when I was depressed before getting sick, and so were friends with depression. But fatigue is so common, that it can’t be considered a marker for depression alone, which is what they try to do..

What I generally see isn't so much an assertion that fatigue means depression, but rather that fatigue is a psychiatric problem, or mental illness in general, and that algorithm always leads to depression.

It's more of a "do you have a better explanation?" thing. As if having a bad, lazy explanation is valid just because you can't convince that person of a better one. But this is an industry that sees nothing wrong with using bad evidence and calling it evidence, rather than bad, so it tracks.

 

[alex3619]

adly the most common way this is going down for children is so much worse than lacking treatment. Their doctors gaslight them and say its just anxiety or depression

Hence why I say their treatments fail. BPS is nearly always just psychosocial, with the social bit being emphasized to try to coerce patients. The primary BPS study that drove a lot of this, what we refer to as the PACE trial, was blatant scientific misconduct. It was not just a bad study, the primary investigator wrote a paper explaining its inherent bias, even though most with a science or stats background can get that from reading the methods section in just a couple of minutes. Its statistical justification is inherently invalid. Hence they have no evidence of success. You can see this almost instantly when you realize the statistically significant response disappears at long term follow up, its regression to the mean. Several methods, like the six minute walking test, were invalidly used, with a known bias. They kludge bias after bias, including deliberate mathematical distortions, then claim success.

BPS has undergone frequent name changes. Patients wake up to the old names, and rightly reject things like conversion disorder, so the name keeps changing. The history of failed claims is also long, including gastric ulcers, asthma, and even hypertension. Indeed at one point heart disease and cancer were blamed by some as psychosomatic. ETA One of the big ones, sometimes still claimed in recent years, is multiple sclerosis.

There is a place for psychosomatic medicine, but its rarely observed and of limited use. I would define it as the study of interaction between cognition and disease, and yes that often involves behavior. However its nearly all psychogenic oriented, which is how the mind causes disease. NO case of psychogenic disease has ever been proven. We have no mechanisms. We have no tests. All in all the entire diagnosis of psychosomatic disease is of almost zero value. I want to say to them come back and talk to me again when you have specific diseases, with specific testable biomedical mechanisms, and treatments etc. Until then don't waste my time.

The point of my commentary is that the direction of causality is wrong. Disease first, and then people change how they respond. Much of that can be adaptive, can assist survival and improvement. Trying to eliminate these "undesirable" behaviors and thoughts is a very bad idea except maybe in very uncommon cases, and even then I suspect most psychiatrists cannot distinguish these uncommon cases from the cases where depression and anxiety are actually adaptive or normal.

 

[alex3619]

My guess is that we’re going to see a lot of PTSD once we find a cure.

I think there is a lot right now, just being ignored.

 

[Sean]

I think there is a lot right now, just being ignored.

Perhaps also in part being masked by necessities of day to day survival.

I have sometimes wondered if we have gone beyond conventional PTSD, into a qualitatively different place, where it almost doesn't matter, and is just not particularly relevant any more. Just a thought.

 

[alex3619]

I have sometimes wondered if we have gone beyond conventional PTSD, into a qualitatively different place, where it almost doesn't matter, and is just not particularly relevant any more. Just a thought.

Hypothetical - If your whole life is a waking nightmare, and keeps getting worse, how much worse is a PTSD flashback? The past was better than now. However during recovery, whenever we find a cure or if you are one of the lucky few, PTSD might substantially delay recovery.

These are questions research psychiatrists should be asking, but almost never do.

 

[BrightCandle]

Hypothetical - If your whole life is a waking nightmare, and keeps getting worse, how much worse is a PTSD flashback? The past was better than now. However during recovery, whenever we find a cure or if you are one of the lucky few, PTSD might substantially delay recovery.

These are questions research psychiatrists should be asking, but almost never do.

None of us or these children are going to trust doctors ever again. That genie never goes back in the bottle. We will have been the victims of systemic abuse for years, decades, none of us is going to be seeking out the same therapists that harmed us and maligned our disease. Frankly I think its a dangerous moment if we get a drug that helps us, I think it will free a lot of people who have been abandoned by everyone from their beds and who already lost everything, its a powder keg of state abused induced PTSD and anger. These children will be messed up for the rest of their lives, as will we. We wont trust others ever again, this is going to change the way generations behave and how they bring up their own children and how they see the role of government and medicine in our lives.