{"id":5814,"date":"2021-05-21T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nchstats.com\/?p=5814"},"modified":"2021-05-21T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T17:00:00","slug":"podcast-children-and-mental-health-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/2021\/05\/21\/5814\/","title":{"rendered":"PODCAST: Children and Mental Health: Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

STATCAST, MAY 2021: DISCUSSION WITH BENJAMIN ZABLOTSKY, STATISTICIAN, ABOUT CHILDREN AND MENTAL HEALTH.<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/pressroom\/podcasts\/2021\/20210521\/20210521.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

\"podcast-icon\"HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 We now continue our conversation with Ben Zablotsky, health statistician with the Division of Health Interview Statistics on children\u2019s mental health in the United States.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 You mentioned social media and the Internet \u2013 what about more traditional environmental issues that might contribute to mental health issues among children, such as family structure.\u00a0 Does NCHS have any data on how family structure, including maybe divorce, might impact mental health?<\/p>\n

BEN ZABLOTSKY:<\/strong>\u00a0 So in the past, the National Survey of Children\u2019s Health was run out of our center, and we did have some questions about family structure as it relates to whether a parent had divorced or separated.\u00a0 And we looked at this within kind of the lens of \u201cstressful life event.\u201d\u00a0 And we do know generally that, yes, children who experience the stressful life events which can include changes to the family structure have been associated with higher rates of mental health conditions.\u00a0 But other things that we can look at now right within the NHIS have to do with general adversity that a child might be dealing with as it relates to food security or the availability of health resources.\u00a0 And so those items are also associated with mental health and actually in 2021, we have a longer list of stressful life events that are being asked of parents that can then be looked at in the lens of health.\u00a0 And that could be something that is worth exploring further.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 In a general sense, are there any groups of children at higher risk than others at developing mental illness?<\/p>\n

BEN ZABLOTSKY:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 So I would certainly say again that older children are more likely to experience some of these internalizing mental health disorders that talked about in terms of depression and anxiety.\u00a0 Certainly there are children who are dealing with a more adverse living situation who have a higher chance of developing a mental health disorder, but some conditions genetically are actually more likely to occur in boys than girls.\u00a0 So you see that autism spectrum disorder is an example of that, you see higher rates of ADHD among boys versus girls.\u00a0 And generally when someone has accessibility to services, you might see higher rates of diagnosis because they are able to see someone who can actually say \u201cOh yes, that is what this child has.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a treatment plan we can move forward with.\u201d<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 You mentioned autism and ADHD.\u00a0 Thirty, forty years ago you didn\u2019t really hear about these conditions.\u00a0 There\u2019s some that might think that this might be over-diagnosed since they\u2019re relatively new conditions.\u00a0 Do you have any data about that?<\/p>\n

BEN ZABLOTSKY:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 So the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder has changed over the years because the criteria for defining the condition itself has changed.\u00a0 So a lot of the increase you saw in some more recent years have actually been just that \u2013 that it wasn\u2019t necessarily as difficult to get a diagnosis based on the criteria of the DSM \u2013 but I think there\u2019s also a lot to be said about the awareness of these conditions.\u00a0 And there have been campaigns within the CDC itself to increase awareness of developmental disabilities generally, and I think that also attributes quite a bit to the increased rate that we\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 And we can certainly have a whole separate podcast on those topics alone \u2013 maybe we\u2019ll wait till your next publication on that.\u00a0 Are there any other topics you\u2019d like to discuss before we sign off?<\/p>\n

BEN ZABLOTSKY:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 When we\u2019re talking about mental health I think it\u2019s certainly worth talking about mental health within the context of COVID-19 and how the NHIS can capture that.\u00a0 I think one of the challenges of the NHIS is that it is a very large survey, but it\u2019s also cross-sectional so it\u2019s not possible to follow children longitudinally.\u00a0 But what we can do is look at estimates that come out of 2019 and come out of 2020 and start to get a picture of how things might be changing for children in this age of COVID-19.\u00a0 And some things we can look at or just access to care and potentially the use of telemedicine to receive services.\u00a0 You know, I\u2019ve talked a lot about treatment generally \u2013 a lot of the treatment in 2019, you know looking at the 2019 data, was face-to-face treatment that these individuals were receiving.\u00a0 But a lot of times, you know, a lot of treatment is received through the schools and with schools being virtual, it\u2019s quite likely that some children have lost out in some of the care they normally receive.\u00a0 So I want to certainly look at that avenue of research moving forward because there\u2019s a lot that\u2019s happened obviously and one thing we don\u2019t want to lose sight of is how children\u2019s mental health have been affected.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well you raise a good point, because with the shuttering of schools and the isolation felt by some children and the disadvantages some children have, are you planning to directly look at the correlation between virtual learning and mental health issues that were tied to the pandemic?<\/p>\n

BEN ZABLOTSKY:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 So that\u2019s one thing that\u2019s tricky to look at within our survey \u2019cause we don\u2019t have a lot of data on the specific schools the children are attending and the resources they had prior to COVID and receiving.\u00a0 But I certainly think that understanding various services \u2013 and we ask questions about special education-related services \u2013 we have to understand how those might have changed and certainly will have changed when we are dealing with something like virtual schooling.<\/p>\n

HOST:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well that also would be a great topic for its own podcast so thanks very much Ben.<\/p>\n

BEN ZABLOTSKY:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 No problem \u2013 my pleasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STATCAST, MAY 2021: DISCUSSION WITH BENJAMIN ZABLOTSKY, STATISTICIAN, ABOUT CHILDREN AND MENTAL HEALTH. https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/pressroom\/podcasts\/2021\/20210521\/20210521.htm HOST:\u00a0 We now continue our conversation with Ben Zablotsky, health statistician with the Division of Health Interview Statistics on children\u2019s mental health in the United States. HOST:\u00a0 You mentioned social media and the Internet \u2013 what about more traditional environmental issues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14289,14310,63724],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}