An international team of researchers co-led by Professor Jo Van Herwegen at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, and Professor Andrea Samson (UniDistance Suisse and University of Fribourg) has examined data from over 6,600 families in 70 countries, in order to understand how the pandemic affected anxiety levels for children with a neurodevelopmental condition (NDC), their neurotypical siblings and their parents.
The families surveyed included a child with one of the most frequently diagnosed NDCs: autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), developmental language disorder, Down syndrome, Williams syndrome, and intellectual disability. Parents were invited to fill in an online questionnaire about their family situation, anxiety levels, and concerns. About a third of the families also provided information about a typically developing sibling.
The findings, published today in the Journal of Global Health, highlighted how anxiety levels significantly increased at the onset of the pandemic for both parents and their children with an NDC, as well as for any typically developing siblings. However, while anxiety decreased to near pre-pandemic levels for the children as the pandemic’s first wave progressed, their parents appeared to experience a chronic state of increased stress.
The factors contributing to parental anxiety were mainly related to health concerns for themselves and their children, irrespective of the type of NCD their child had, as well as worries about limited opportunities for social interaction and development due to measures like social distancing.
