Dataset Information

Anxiety, concerns and COVID-19: Cross-country perspectives from families and individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the mental health and well-being of children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) and of their families worldwide. However, there is insufficient evidence to understand how different factors (e.g., individual, family, country, children) have impacted on anxiety levels of families and their children with NDCs developed over time.

Methods

We used data from a global survey assessing the experience of 8043 families and their children with NDCs (mean of age (m) = 13.18 years, 37% female) and their typically developing siblings (m = 12.9 years, 45% female) in combination with data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the University of Oxford, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, to create a multilevel data set. Using stepwise multilevel modelling, we generated child-, family- and country-related factors that may have contributed to the anxiety levels of children with NDCs, their siblings if they had any, and their parents. All data were reported by parents.

Results

Our results suggest that parental anxiety was best explained by family-related factors such as concerns about COVID-19 and illness. Children's anxiety was best explained by child-related factors such as children's concerns about loss of routine, family conflict, and safety in general, as well as concerns about COVID-19. In addition, anxiety levels were linked to the presence of pre-existing anxiety conditions for both children with NDCs and their parents.

Conclusions

The present study shows that across the globe there was a raise in anxiety levels for both parents and their children with NDCs because of COVID-19 and that country-level factors had little or no impact on explaining differences in this increase, once family and child factors were considered. Our findings also highlight that certain groups of children with NDCs were at higher risk for anxiety than others and had specific concerns. Together, these results show that anxiety of families and their children with NDCs during the COVID-19 pandemic were predicted by very specific concerns and worries which inform the development of future toolkits and policy. Future studies should investigate how country factors can play a protective role during future crises.

SUBMITTER: Sideropoulos V

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10373111 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Anxiety, concerns and COVID-19: Cross-country perspectives from families and individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions.

Sideropoulos Vassilis V Van Herwegen Jo J Meuleman Ben B Alessandri Michael M Alnemary Faisal M FM Rad Jamal Amani JA Lavenex Pamela A Banta PAB Bolshakov Nikita N Bölte Sven S Buffle Paulina P Cai Ru Y RY Campos Ruth R Chirita-Emandi Adela A Costa Andreia P AP Costanzo Floriana F Des Portes Vincent V Dukes Daniel D Faivre Laurence L Famelart Nawelle N Fisher Marisa H MH Gamaiunova Liudmilla L Giannadou Aikaterini A Gupta Rashmi R Hardan Antonio Y AY Houdayer-Robert Françoise F Hrncirova Lenka L Iaochite Roberto Tadeu RT Jariabkova Katarina K Klein-Tasman Bonita P BP Lavenex Pierre P Malik Supriya S Mari Francesca F Martinez-Castilla Pastora P Menghini Deny D Nuske Heather J HJ Palikara Olympia O Papon Anouk A Pegg Robin S RS Pouretemad Hamidreza H Poustka Luise L Prosetzky Ingolf I Renieri Alessandra A Rhodes Sinead M SM Riby Deborah M DM Rossi Massimiliano M Sadeghi Saeid S Su Xueyen X Tai Claire C Tran Michel M Tynan Fionnuala F Uljarević Mirko M Van Hecke Amy V AV Veiga Guida G Verloes Alain A Vicari Stefano S Werneck-Rohrer Sonja G SG Zander Eric E Samson Andrea C AC

Journal of global health 20230728

<h4>Background</h4>The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the mental health and well-being of children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) and of their families worldwide. However, there is insufficient evidence to understand how different factors (e.g., individual, family, country, children) have impacted on anxiety levels of families and their children with NDCs developed over time.<h4>Methods</h4>We used data from a global survey assessing the experience of 8043 families and their ...[more]

PMID: 37497751

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Dataset Information

Anxiety, concerns and COVID-19: Cross-country perspectives from families and individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Anxiety, concerns and COVID-19: Cross-country perspectives from families and individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions.

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