Family and Peer Functioning Mediate Associations Between COVID-19 Impact and Child Mental Health

Despite known connections of COVID-19 pandemic impacts with child mental health, family functioning (FF), and peer functioning (PF), the specific mediation effects of FF and PF on the relationship between COVID-19 impact and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and emotion dysregulation have yet to be examined in an integrated model. We examined connections between COVID-19 pandemic impacts, mental health symptomatology, FF, and PF of children, as well as mediation effects of FF and PF on the associations between pandemic impacts and childhood mental health symptomatology. Parents of a large clinical sample of 159 youths (Mage= 11.96, SDage= 3.36) rated measures of pandemic impacts, child psychosocial functioning, and child mental health over the first several months of the pandemic. Results indicated correlations of pandemic impacts with child symptoms of depression and emotion dysregulation, and a trend towards correlation with anxiety. The combined FF and PF effects mediated the association between pandemic impacts and child mental health symptomatology, including emotion dysregulation, and to a lesser degree depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms. Moreover, emotion dysregulation remarkably associated with total effects of pandemic impacts connection with both FF and PF, providing empirical support for the strong relationships between emotional dysregulation of children and their social, family, and stress contexts. These findings create a foundation for further work on examining longitudinal connections of context and child mental health as well as treatments targeting bolstering social and family connectedness concurrently as a method to impact the relationships of stress with childhood mental health.