“The COVID-19 pandemic deepened existing health disparities and thrust children into a mental health epidemic, altering the landscape of health and wellbeing for a generation.” – Dr. Jatinder Hayre in his critical analysis of ‘entrenched inequities’ in the UK, The Lost Generation of COVID-19.
Dr. Jatinder Hayre presents research regarding Britain’s struggle with COVID-19 that highlights the way it has “fundamentally reshaped its social, economic, and health landscape… with excessive impact on children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
While these disparities were not created by the pandemic, Dr. Hayre explains how these issues were ‘thrust into sharper relief’ by the crisis. Dr. Hayre explains how, after a decade of austerity, education provision was already under-funded with the most deprived areas facing the largest proportional losses.
Dr. Hayre says, “For those already living in poverty, the combined effect of losing out on learning, school meals, and emotional support created a crisis of compounding vulnerabilities. Post-traumatic stress, heightened anxiety, and social isolation threatened to derail development at a critical juncture, with long term implications for children’s longer term mental and physical health.”
To address these disparities, Dr. Hayre suggests urgent policy shifts to prioritize mental health, from education reform to welfare provision, with “ring-fenced” funding for child mental health services.
“Failure to act decisively means condemning millions of children to carry the pandemics’ trauma well into adulthood, perpetuating cycles of poverty, ill health and despair.” – Dr. Hayre
He recommends free, universal access to pediatric mental health services, especially for the most disadvantaged.
Source: News Medical
Reference: Hayre, J. (2025). The Lost Generation of COVID-19. doi.org/10.4324/9781003312529.
