Editorial Perspective: Rethinking child and adolescent mental health care after COVID-19

Abstract

While COVID-19 pandemic has allegedly passed its first peak in most western countries, health systems are progressively adapting to the ‘new normality’. In child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), such organizational envisioning is needed to cope with the foreseeable psychological effects of prolonged social isolation induced by nation-wide public health measures such as school closure. CAMHS need to ensure flexible responses to the psychopathological consequences of evolving societal dynamics, as dramatically actualized by the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic. This would imply (a) shifting the focus of intervention from symptom reduction and containment of acute crises in a comparat..