Causal Effects of School Closures on Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ontario, Canada

Music City Center 

In Canada, public health strategies aimed at reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic included school closures, resulting in widespread education disruption. It is now widely understood that the pandemic precipitated an unprecedented mental health crisis among children and youth in Canada. However, there is little to no longitudinal evidence on the causal impact that school closures may have had on this crisis. As the world navigates the post-pandemic recovery, governments and researchers have already begun critically evaluating various pandemic response policies that were enacted, which is critical to better prepare for and more effectively respond to future pandemics. Using linked EHR data across various healthcare sectors, obtained from IntelliHealth Ontario (ON), we identify all healthcare resource utilization records among children and youth in ON for a comprehensive array of adverse mental health-related conditions and outcomes. Our analytic strategy is to exploit the staggered returns to the classroom in ON following the 2020/21 Winter Break to estimate the causal effects of interest. This is ongoing work, and we will summarize our findings thus far.

COVID-19

Mental Health

Health Policy

School Closures

Children and Youth

Public Health