The COVID-19 pandemic deepened existing health disparities and thrust children into a mental health epidemic, altering the landscape of health and wellbeing for a generation.
This is the stark warning of Dr Jatinder Hayre in his critical analysis of ‘entrenched inequities’ in the UK, The Lost Generation of COVID-19.
He presents a breadth of research to set out how, after a prolonged period of cuts to UK public services, Britain’s struggle with COVID-19 has fundamentally reshaped its social, economic, and health landscape. Dr Hayre, who led the Independent SAGE report on COVID-19 and Health Inequality, outlines urgent policy shifts to redress the balance.
The author highlights the excessive impact on children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, in particular: “Surging anxiety, stunted social development, and heartbreaking loneliness have coalesced into a mental health epidemic that is likely to outlast the virus itself.
“Britain stands at a pivotal moment, teetering between a path of meaningful reform and a slide into deeper inequity. COVID-19 exposed and magnified the mental health vulnerabilities of our children. If unaddressed, these psychological wounds may define a generation: permanently blocking some children from realising their potential and cementing a landscape of enduring social inequality.”
While these disparities were not created by the pandemic, Dr Hayre explains how these issues were ‘thrust into sharper relief’ by the crisis. Dr Hayre explains how, after a decade of austerity, education provision was already under-funded with the most deprived areas facing the largest proportional losses.
So, he explains, when the pandemic arrived, ‘these existing fissures became chasms’; for example, children in lower income households lacking access to technology were unable to keep up with remote learning. Meanwhile, children in well-resourced families were able to adjust to remote learning, with private tutoring, parental oversight and dedicated study spaces.
Inequities in education have profound implications, as research unequivocally shows that adults with less schooling experience disproportionately higher rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity and mental health issues.
Besides the academic impact, school closures impacted children in other ways; children living in poverty no longer had access to free hot meals, while children from at-risk or violent households no longer had adult supervision and safeguarding.
Dy Hayre said: “For those already living in poverty, the combined effect of losing out on learning, school meals, and emotional support created a crisis of compounding vulnerabilities. Post-traumatic stress, heightened anxiety, and social isolation threated to derail development at a critical juncture, with long term implications for children’s longer term mental and physical health.”
Dr Hayre suggests a ‘hidden catastrophe’ of the pandemic is ‘the mental health crisis that has engulfed our youngest citizens’. He explains that mental health services were already stretched in 2019, with demand far outstripping supply, and the pandemic exacerbated this shortfall on multiple fronts.
Children, isolated from their peer groups and family, reported heightened rates of stress, depression, and suicidal ideation. Academic setbacks for those unable to afford laptops and tutors, thrust children into despair: “the mental anguish of being left out – of both education and social life – was sharp.”
Dr Hayre explains how children’s brains are susceptible to trauma, with prolonged stress rewiring emotional regulation, increasing the risk of lifetime anxiety and depression.
“For disadvantaged children, the mental health repercussions of repeated academic failure can solidify a cycle of poverty, poor health and reduced aspirations. This is how a mental health crisis transforms into a societal crisis, with ramifications for the very fabric of post-pandemic Britain,” he explains.
To address these disparities, Dr Hayre suggests urgent policy shifts to prioritise mental health, from education reform to welfare provision, with ring-fenced funding for child mental health services. Besides the moral and social concerns of health inequity, the author points to the broader societal ramifications such as a shrinking workforce, economic stagnation and growing pressure on healthcare services.
Dr Hayre advocates for policy interventions and structural reforms anchored in equity and fairness, and warns: “If we fail to address the structural underpinnings of inequality, future crises will merely entrench them further. The question is not merely how to fix what is broken but how to imagine a society in which no group is systematically left behind.
“Failure to act decisively means condemning millions of children to carry the pandemics trauma well into adulthood, perpetuating cycles of poverty, ill health and despair.”
He argues for a system he calls ‘weighted universalism’, which amounts to universal access – with extra services weighted to the most disadvantaged areas, to front-load intervention where the need is higher.
For example, this includes free paediatric mental health services across the board, but with extra coverage in high poverty areas.
“By ensuring that every child is equipped, protected and empowered,” he explains, “we lay the cornerstone for a post pandemic Britain that not only recovers but thrives, forging a legacy of justice, progress, and unity for generations to come.”