Dr Karen Street, Assistant Officer for Mental Health and Wellbeing, said:
We welcome the publication of this important and timely report from the BMA.
Paediatricians across the country are very concerned about the consequences of absence from school and the wider impacts of the current pandemic on children and young people's mental health. We support the call for research in to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of children and young people to be prioritised.
In our report published in March, just before the pandemic took hold in the UK, we called on the UK Government to provide increased, ring-fenced funding for CYP mental health services delivered by CAMHS and local authorities, that reflects local needs. This is even more crucial in light of COVID-19.