Abstract
Measures taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic are particularly stressful for families. Limited data is available regarding the effects of a mandatory quarantine on the psychological stress of children, adolescents and their parents. Quarantined individuals participating in the online-based CoCo-Fakt study had at least one child <3, 3 to <6, 6 to <10, 10 to <14 and 14 to <16 years old (n = 2153). Parents were asked about how often their children felt nervous, anxious, or tense, down or depressed, lonely or physical reactions occur. A relative sum score characterizing psychosocial stress was determined and related to parents’ socio-demographic factors, psychosocial distress, coping strategies and resilience. Parents reported significantly higher psychological stress if at least one child was quarantined. Parents’ relative psychological stress sum score had the strongest influence on the psychological state of the children across all age groups (β = 0.315–0.457) besides male sex of the reporting parent, no partnership, low to medium socioeconomic status, lower resilience and coping scores, and parents quarantined as close contacts. The variance in the linear regression models was between 17.8% and 31.4%. These findings highlight that the entire family system must be considered during official mandatory quarantines.
Highlights
Since the first SARS-CoV-2 infections were identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, the virus has spread rapidly across the world and led to significant restrictions in private and public life [1]
As part of the CoCo-Fakt study, an online survey of individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 infection (IP = infected person) and their close contacts (CP = contact person) was conducted between 12 December 2020 and 6 January 2021, following the COVID19 Snapshot Monitoring Study conducted by the University of Erfurt, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the ‘Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung’ (BzgA; Federal Centre for Health Education) [17]
As there is evidence that parental practices and coping measures affect children’s mental health, our study shows that parental psychological stress had the strongest influence on child stress in every age group [12]
Summary
Since the first SARS-CoV-2 infections were identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, the virus has spread rapidly across the world and led to significant restrictions in private and public life [1]. Panda et al (2021) studied the effects of the current pandemic, lockdowns and quarantine measures They included 15 studies in their meta-analysis and showed that, from a total sample of 22,996 children, 34.5% suffered from anxiety, 41.7% from depression, 42.3% from increased irritability and 30.8% from concentration difficulties [7]. Studies from China reported symptoms of restlessness, irritability, and concentration difficulties related to the COVID-19 pandemic in children and adolescents [8]. Fransisco et al (2020) analyzed the immediate psychological and behavioral symptoms associated with COVID-19 quarantine in children and adolescents from Italy, Spain and Portugal [9]. To assess these symptoms, the parents of 1480 children and adolescents (52.8% boys) aged 3–18 years old were interviewed. Approximately one-third of all children felt nervous, anxious, restless or fearful during the quarantine period
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