More children and adolescents in the United States were receiving mental health care in 2022 than before the COVID-19 pandemic, a new national analysis by researchers at Penn State College of Medicine shows — and the rise was driven largely by newly entering patients rather than greater intensity of care among those already in treatment.
Study scope and main findings
The investigators examined roughly 13 million pediatric health records from October 2018 through December (study period continued in the source), with results available online ahead of publication in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Open. Compared with pre-pandemic years, the team reported substantial increases in several measures of mental health care by 2022:
- First-time psychiatric medication prescriptions rose by 35%.
- First-time psychiatric diagnoses increased by 24%.
- Initiation of psychotherapy courses grew by 26%.
The study found the most dramatic medication rebounds among girls: antidepressant prescriptions climbed 137% for girls ages 6 to 12 and 65% for girls ages 13 to 18.
| Measure | Percent increase vs. pre-pandemic |
|---|---|
| First-time psychiatric prescriptions | 35% |
| First-time psychiatric diagnoses | 24% |
| New psychotherapy courses | 26% |
| Antidepressant prescriptions, girls 6–12 | 137% |
| Antidepressant prescriptions, girls 13–18 | 65% |
Context and interpretation
Authors note that youth mental health problems were rising before the pandemic and that the disruption of 2020 appears to have accelerated those trends. The data suggest more young people sought care for the first time after schools closed and community routines were disrupted, rather than the increase being explained primarily by existing patients receiving more or longer treatment.
"Youth mental health was already worsening before the pandemic, which further accelerated these trends,"
said Raman Baweja, a Penn State psychiatry and public health sciences professor and first author on the study. He added that the increases did not affect all groups equally, singling out girls as experiencing particularly steep rises in medication use.
Implications for clinicians and policy makers
The pattern — a surge of new patients and a pronounced rise in first-time prescriptions, especially antidepressants for young girls — raises several issues for health systems, schools and public health officials: ensuring access to timely and appropriate assessment, supporting nonpharmacologic care such as psychotherapy where indicated, and monitoring medication safety and outcomes in children and adolescents. The study dovetails with long-standing surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documenting growing emotional distress among youth over the past decade.
Researchers emphasized that more detailed work is needed to understand drivers behind diagnostic and prescribing changes, to examine long-term outcomes for those newly treated, and to identify which services are most effective for which patients — questions that bear directly on workforce requirements, reimbursement, and school-based mental health supports.
These findings add to a growing evidence base that the pandemic’s effects on young people's mental health have been lasting and uneven. Policymakers and clinicians face the challenge of translating this population-level signal into targeted strategies that expand access to safe, evidence-based care for children and adolescents.
