Last month, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended primary care screening in children as young as 8 years old for anxiety and continued its prior recommendations to screen children 12 and up for depression. The task force announcement was based on a massive literature review published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It concluded that the relative balance and harm of extra screening of children 8 and above is unclear but opted to err on the side of caution in view of rising rates of mental health conditions and even suicide attempts in teens and pre-teen children. This recommendation follows a recent surgeon general warning in December of 2021 on the youth mental health crisis and a recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation that rates of anxiety and depression jumped by over 25 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, amounting to over 1 million additional affected children.
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