Coronavirus: 'Our children's worlds fell apart'

Northern Ireland's interim Mental Health Champion is warning 'we will fail a generation' if we do not introduce mitigations to prevent mental illness among children.

Professor Siobhan O'Neill was giving evidence to Stormont's Education Committee on Wednesday.

Prof O'Neill said the pandemic is having an adverse affect on children:

"I'm increasingly concerned about the mental health of our young people and the impact the pandemic has had on them.

"As we know prolonged stress and adversity leads to mental illness and poor educational outcomes too."

Lockdowns, social isolation and fear of the disease have all contributed to challenging behaviour and some are showing early warning signs of mental illness, she warned.

Prof O'Neill is calling for young people to have mental health assessments this summer as part of a widespread wellbeing initiative:

"The pandemic has been extraordinarily stressful for our children, in a few days their world's completely fell apart

"Not only did they have to cope with the stress and uncertainty of a global pandemic and the prospect of death on an unimaginable scale, they also lost contact with their friends and teachers with the closure of schools.

"It's hard for us as adults to imagine what this has been like for them, they were faced with a disease that they themselves were unlikely to get ill from and many of the elements of their life, the things that made life meaningful were taken from them and they were left completely powerless.

"I fear that unless we act now we will have failed a generation of young people."