Helping Children with Mental Health Issues Related to the Pandemic

Many parents, educators, and counsellors have noted the pandemic’s negative effects on children. Maybe a teen you know is unusually anxious about moving away for university, after years of online learning at home — or is trying to deal with a relative’s long COVID — or your child has become withdrawn since someone died from the virus.

Leading mental health organizations such as the American Psychological Association report that, linked to the pandemic, children are showing higher levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. And many such organizations say children need more resources to support their mental health.

Books as a resource 

One way to help our children process the negative effects of the past three+ years is to provide books about issues they’re dealing with. And recently Menderist staff, as parents themselves, researched websites that include books about the pandemic and children’s mental health. See below for a selection of these sites.

Note: Since Menderist’s main audience is parents of adolescent and older children, we’re emphasizing sites with book choices for this group. And we’ve included some research tips (see below) to help you determine whether a book meets the needs of your family or organization.

Edutopia:

Renowned filmmaker George Lucas established the Edutopia educational foundation more than 30 years ago. A librarian with the organization compiled a list of books about the pandemic, and it features choices ‘for middle and high school readers in four categories: developing resilience and adaptability, responding to crisis, finding laughter and fun, and exploring dystopias”: https://www.edutopia.org/article/22-ya-novels-help-students-process-pandemic-or-forget-it-bit/

In addition to listing books about mental health, Edutopia is a useful source of other information, particularly for educators: one example is “2 Ways to Encourage Better Note-Taking” by physics teacher Marianna Ruggerio [@msruggerio on Twitter].

Worlds of Words:

The goal of Worlds of Words (WOW) is to provide resources “to encourage educators …to integrate global literature into the lives of children”. The organization operates out of the University of Arizona and its website lists many books related to the pandemic: https://wowlit.org/links/booklists/covid-19-books/

Information and education specialists:

Other sources of book recommendations include librarians, teachers, and bookstore staff. 

Librarian Fallon Farokhi [@ffarokhi on Twitter] writes a blog called The Story Spectator, which includes book listings about children’s mental health issues such as anxiety and body positivity: as an example, see https://thestoryspectator.blogspot.com/search/label/feelings

The Story Spectator also links to other helpful information, such as the Child Mind Institute, which describes itself as “the leading independent nonprofit in children’s mental health.” Here’s a list of the Institute’s recommended books about mental health: https://childmind.org/article/best-childrens-books-about-mental-health/

Podcasts:

Australian author Allison Tait [on Twitter at @altait] co-hosts the podcast, Your Kid’s Next Read.

A recent episode, #90, featured books about feelings: the hosts discussed books for younger children and for the adolescent and older age group that Menderist focuses on. And the podcast website contains show notes per episode, listing the books covered: https://childrensbooksdaily.com/episodes/episode-ep90/

Researching book choices

Here are some tips if you’d like to read book reviews before you make your final choices. At Menderist, we use the search format ‘reviews:[name of book],[name of author]’ – which helps locate reviews of particular books, if any have been done, at top-ranked organizations including major newspapers and well-known sites such as Kirkus Reviews and CommonSense Media (which, incidentally, also provides helpful reviews of family movies).

Other information sources

Psychology / mental health organizations:

Many organizations offer articles and other resources to help families deal with pandemic-related concerns. For example, in Fall 2022 the American Psychological Association published an article about about how to help kids process and recover from grief: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/10/kids-covid-grief

For further reading – studies:

(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8972920/

(2) American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/special-childrens-mental-health

Have a recommendation?

If you’re a Menderist subscriber (and / or follow us on Twitter @Menderist) and know of an organization / website that lists pandemic-related books about mental health, suitable for adolescent or older children, we’d like to hear from you. Please send a note with your choice(s) to jon@menderist.com, with the Subject line ‘Pandemic Books for Older Children – Suggestions’. We plan to publish a follow up article in a couple of weeks.