ARU Final Report

Full Report – March 2021 27 and anxious and 88.8% experiencing changes in their sleeping patterns. Young people reflected on the boredom they experienced in the absence of a routine associated with education and work as negatively affecting their mental health (Roberts et al., 2020; Street Doctors et al., 2020). Spending most of their time in-doors with reduced or no contact with others was difficult for these young people (Roberts et al., 2020). Furthermore, Become (2020) found that social distancing was having a negative impact on young people’s wellbeing. Some respondents on our questionnaire also experienced the death of a family member during this time which inevitably impacted their mental health. Cortina et al. (2020a, 2020b); Roberts et al. (2020); and Street Doctors et al. (2020) suggest that fear about friends and loved ones, or indeed they themselves, catching the virus is linked to perpetuating mental health concerns. Furthermore, The Children’s Society (2020) household survey found that 89% of children and young people were worried to some extent about thevirus and therewas a significant association for those living in relative poverty: 23% of those in relative poverty were very worried, compared to 15% of their peers who were not in relative poverty. Some young people spoke about vulnerable family members (Roberts et al., 2020; Street Doctors et al., 2020) while separation or loss of family members was also a concern (Cortina et al., 2020a; 2020b). The negative influence of the media and constant stream of news was also mentioned in our research. This was reflected by Cortina et al. (2020a; 2020b) who found that although being informed can be a protective factor, over-exposure to media that focuses on the health risks and severe, emotive cases can prolong these worries. 4.2.2 Exacerbating existing mental health problems It is estimated that almost half of care experienced young people will have an existing mental health challenge (Become, 2020) and this was evident in the current research. Some care leavers in the focus groups described having had mental health challenges in the past and feeling like they were overcoming these; but the pandemic triggered and perpetuated their problems and “set off a massive chain of events” that has, for some, been “unbearable”: “For me the pandemic set off a massive chain of events that really impacted my mental health, like losing family members, losing my job, having to go on benefits, waiting five weeks, having no money, being at home all the time which I’m not used to doing. I’m not on medication anymore and I was doing pretty well mentally before the whole thing and now it’s just crap. All throughout it, the longer it goes on the worse it gets for everybody.” (FG: Female, 18) “There were times when it wasn’t as bad and there were times when it was unbearable… And there was a lot of stuff on social media that wasn’t helping and then of course I ended up going into hospital for a week. So it was very much up and down and again I suffer from mental health even before the virus existed.” (FG: Male, 22) “The first few weeks it did affect my mental health quite badly. I was worried about how we were going to cope with money….” (FG: Female, 20) Likewise, Bentley et al. (2020) cite research from Young Minds (2020), which suggests that 80% of surveyed children with pre-existing mental health conditions said the pandemic had exacerbated their mental health. Furthermore, the number and proportion of calls to Childline about mental and emotional health have all increased since lockdown (Bentley et al., 2020). Street Doctors et al. (2020) found that 76% of their respondents suggested that coronavirus had a negative impact on their mental