DrKatrinaRoundfield

Honestly, I really don't think Fauci or the CDC thought enough about the mental health of teens or any of us when the lockdowns occurred. I'm a statistics geek and love quantitative analyses, and I could be wrong and not have all the right data, but it seems teens are far more likely to end up with a debilitating long-term mental health disorder due to isolation than end up with dying from COVID or having debilitating effects from COVID.

I've been tracking this in the news as well. I think there is a long history of people feeling like you can "pray" your mental health symptoms away. In Killingly, I think this has also become a bit political because therapy can be thought of as another way to "give my kid advice." Parents, reasonably so, should be discerning of who gives their kids advice. But if parents don't trust mental health care or systems in general and don't really understand therapy or believe mental illness is real, you end up with a Killingly situation.

We absolutely are social creatures. 100% the research indicates that mental health has worsened due to isolation of the pandemic. No question about it. Here's just one recent article summarizing the affects of COVID isolation on young people.

Here are a few tips I have to support kids during this time:

1) Think about what is safe to do socially and do those things. For example, outdoor playdates, zoom time with friends, visit your pod, etc.

2) Keep kids interested in being outside the home and help them remember that outside the home is still safe. Go on hikes, take walks around the neighborhood, take a drive together, etc.

3) Make educated risk-reward assessments. Sometimes, it's better to take the risk of going on a family trip socially than it is to take the risk of staying isolated.

4) Lastly, my cofounders and I invented appahealth.com because we wanted to create a safe place for teens to connect socially with a mentor from the comfort of their home. I encourage you to take a look if you have a teen in your life.

Ahh I see. Got it. I definitely have seen a proliferation of obscure disorders that teens say they have because they watched it on tiktok or now all their friends seem to have this rare disorder. For example, all of a sudden, with the rise of tiktok, I've seen a correlation between teens reporting having dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder) and I've seen some tiktoks with teens showing they have DID.

Well that's the thing about data and prevention. We may never know if we don't have the experiment to test it. We can agree on my primary point that mental health should have been addressed and considered more. One epidemic has clearly led to another. Thanks for engaging. I think your point is valid and I am open to pushback.