Immediate Psychological Effects of the COVID-19 Quarantine in Youth From Italy and Spain

By M. Orgilés, A. Morales, E. Delvecchio, C. Mazzeschi, J. Espada. Frontiers in Psychology, 2020

750 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The COVID-19 quarantine has affected more than 860 million children and adolescents worldwide, but to date, no study has been developed within Western countries to examine the psychological impact on their lives. The present study aims to examine for the first time the emotional impact of the quarantine on children and adolescents from Italy and Spain, two of the countries most affected by COVID-19. Participants were 1,143 parents of Italian and Spanish children aged 3 to 18 years who completed a survey providing information about how the quarantine affects their children and themselves, compared to before the home confinement. Results show that 85.7% of the parents perceived changes in their children’s emotional state and behaviors during the quarantine. The most frequent symptoms were difficulty concentrating (76.6%), boredom (52%), irritability (39%), restlessness (38.8%), nervousness (38%), feelings of loneliness (31.3%), uneasiness (30.4%), and worries (30.1%). Spanish parents reported more symptoms than Italians. As expected, children of both countries used monitors more frequently, spent less time doing physical activity, and slept more hours during the quarantine. Furthermore, when family coexistence during quarantine became more difficult, the situation was more serious, and the level of stress was higher, parents tended to report more emotional problems in their children. The quarantine impacts considerably on Italian and Spanish youth, reinforcing the need to detect children with problems as early as possible to improve their psychological well-being.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e2c59c628ad96108c7cb2b0c8296c5e80a9bead0

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In Clinical Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The effect of age, gender, income, work, and physical activity on mental health during coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdown in Austria (2020, result): “That was shown by a study on 1143 parents in Italy and Spain, in which results were slightly higher for Spain compared to Italy [18].”
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on quality of life and mental health in children and adolescents in Germany (2021, background): “Further, two European non-representative studies from Italy and Spain found that mental health problems such as conduct problems, irritability and loneliness in children and adolescents increased during the COVID-19 lockdown [26, 27].”
Psychological effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on children and families in the UK (2020, background): “…children in the UK are likely to have been impacted emotionally and behaviourally by the lockdown and are in alignment with other studies about the consequences of COVID-19 lockdown on child mental health and well-being in Italy and Spain (Orgilés et al., 2020) and in China (Duan et al., 2020).”