Teens’ brains aged faster during the first year of the pandemic, study says, and stress may be to blame – CTV
Dec. 2, 2022
The brains of U.S. teens have physically changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, aging faster than normal, a new study says.
The young study participants also reported more severe symptoms of anxiety, depression and what scientists call internalized problems — meaning feelings of sadness, low self-esteem and fear and trouble regulating their emotions — after the first year of the pandemic.
Dozens of studies have found that teens’ and adolescents’ mental health has suffered during the pandemic. They have been taken out of school, away from their friends and familiar support structures, and had to live with the uncertainty and fear that came with the coronavirus. Many parents lost jobs. Millions of children lost parents and grandparents to COVID-19.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, is one of the first to look at the physical changes in the brain brought by that the stress and anxiety.
