Issues impacting young people during lockdown: April-June, 2020

Trends amongst young people during the first national lockdown

The Mix has launched a quarterly report which shows the issues impacting young people each quarter, using our helpline data. The first report focuses on the first three months of national lockdown, revealing the issues that young people were contacting our helpline about most during this time, as well as the connection between different issues. In order to uncover unseasonal trends, the data for this period is compared to the data for the same period in the previous year.

While The Mix recorded significant increases in cases mentioning depression, anxiety, family and Autism or Asperger’s; some positive trends were also observed. In particular, the number and proportion of cases mentioning stress, suicidal thoughts or thoughts of suicide with intent to act fell sharply year-on-year in the second quarter (Q2) of 2020. It appears that, while the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown meant worsening mental health for many young people, for some it provided an opportunity to avoid day-to-day pressures, possibly resulting at some positive effect on their mental health.

Read our research paper to find out more: https://cdn.themix.org.uk/uploads/2021/04/Quartlerly-Data-Trends.pdf