US Kids received mental health treatment in record numbers after pandemic

Rise in psychiatric medication prescriptions, especially for girls, among key takeaways of national study

Penn State

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HERSHEY, Pa. — When schools closed in the spring of 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of children and adolescents receiving mental health treatment in the United States fell by more than half. By 2022, that number had not only rebounded, it exceeded pre-pandemic levels, according to a new national study by researchers from Penn State College of Medicine.

In an analysis of 13 million health records of children and adolescents, available online now ahead of publication in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Open, the researchers found the rise in pediatric mental health treatment patterns was driven largely by new patients versus existing patients seeking more care. Rates of first-time prescriptions for psychiatric medication increased by 35%, outpacing the rise of both first-time psychiatric diagnoses and psychotherapy courses — 24% and 26%, respectively — compared with the years before the pandemic.

The steepest increases were among girls. Antidepressant prescriptions rose 137% among girls ages six to 12 years and 65% among girls ages 13 to 18 years.

“Youth mental health was already worsening before the pandemic, which further accelerated these trends,” said Raman Baweja, professor of psychiatry and behavioral health and of public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine and the first author on the study. This suggests that the rise in psychiatric treatment for mental health not only followed the pandemic but also a decade-long rise of heightened emotional distress among young people, documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey. “But it didn't hit everyone the same. Some groups, girls especially, were affected more.”

According to Baweja, existing research had focused on pediatric mental health trends during 2020. However, much less was known about what happened after schools reopened and daily life returned to normal, or whether increases in mental health treatment reflected more children entering care for the first time or more intensive treatment for those already receiving services.

To parse the two, the researchers tracked cases from October 2018 to December 2022 using the TriNetX U.S. Collaborative Network, which provided a research database of pooled de-identified records from 72 U.S. health systems. Geographically, the sample spanned participating health systems in all four U.S. census regions with roughly 40% of pediatric patients from the South and the rest spread across the Northeast, Midwest and West.

The team analyzed the dataset through two complementary lenses, isolating new patients — children and adolescents receiving a first diagnosis, prescription or therapy after at least a year without a diagnosis or respective treatment — and treatment-engaged patients, defined as those with at least two behavioral health visits within one of the three 17-month phases in the study: pre-pandemic, from October 2018 through February 2020; pandemic, from March 2020 through July 2021; and post-pandemic, from August 2021 through December 2022.

“We evaluated data from patients new to care and those who were already in care, and both showed that adolescent females and antidepressant prescriptions were the driving force of the increase in psychiatric care,” Baweja said. Scaling their sample to reflect the national population size, the researchers estimated roughly 40,000 additional girls began antidepressant treatment after the pandemic.

Among all pediatric patients in the “treatment-engaged” group, most measures of medication use changed only slightly between 2018 and 2022, with antidepressant climbing from 32% to 36% among adolescent girls.

Medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) showed smaller increases than antidepressants, with a notable exception among the youngest children in the study. Among those ages three to five years, prescriptions for stimulant medications used to treat new ADHD cases rose 147%, although this group started from a lower baseline and remained far below rates in older children.

The CDC recommends parent training in behavior management as the first-line treatment for children with ADHD under the age of six before trying medication, but pandemic-era disruptions may have left families few alternatives, according to Baweja.

He added that the findings reflect patterns of documented diagnoses and treatment among children and adolescents who received care within the healthcare system, rather than the overall prevalence of mental health conditions among youth.

“Many children experiencing mental health challenges never receive a formal diagnosis or treatment,” Baweja said. “Our study captures those who entered the healthcare system, so these trends reflect changes in healthcare utilization as much as changes in mental health needs.”

The study also found that longstanding racial and ethnic disparities in mental healthcare persisted throughout the pandemic and recovery period. Although telehealth expanded access for many families, it did not eliminate inequities in care, according to Baweja.

“There was hope that telehealth would narrow longstanding gaps in access, particularly for underserved communities,” Baweja said. “Access is not the same for everyone. It is influenced by many factors, including internet connectivity, transportation, family resources, cultural beliefs about mental health, and trust in the healthcare system. Continued efforts are needed to ensure that every child has equitable access to timely, evidence-based care versus simply assuming technology creates access for all.”

The study is one step toward understanding changes in pediatric mental health care among children and adolescents who receive treatment, he added. It fits into a larger line of inquiry from the research team examining how mental health is changing not only for children and adolescents but for adults as well.

“Our ongoing research is examining treatment patterns among both children and adults, including how recent changes — such as medication shortages and evolving clinical practices — have influenced treatment patterns, which groups are more or less likely to receive care and whether disparities in access to evidence-based treatment persist,” Baweja said.

Other Penn State College of Medicine authors include senior author James Waxmonsky, professor of psychiatry and behavioral health and University Chair in child psychiatry; Daniel Waschbusch, professor of psychiatry and behavioral health and vice chair for research; Felix Padilla, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral health; and Richard Mattison, staff physician in psychiatry.

This study was funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.

At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world.

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Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress.

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Journal

JAACAP Open

DOI

10.1016/j.jaacop.2026.04.006 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Post-Pandemic Trends in Pediatric Mental Health Treatment: A Nationwide Study

 

Plants get wearables to track their health

With new sensors, farmers could use real-time information to manage crop conditions before visible signs of plant stress appear

Tufts University

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“The leaf sensor is more of an early warning system showing how the plant is responding in the moment, before visible signs appear,” said Nafize Hossain. 

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Credit: Nafize Hossain

A smartwatch can tell us the level of oxygen in our blood, when our sleep is restless, or the number of steps we take in a day. Now imagine that kind of tracking ability for plants.

By the time farmers see curling leaves or stunted growth in their fields, their crops may already have spent days under stress. A new innovation in plant “wearable” sensors aims to catch those distress signals earlier—before the plant visibly suffers, allowing farmers to respond and help their crops thrive.

In a recent study from Tufts University, researchers created tiny tattoo-like sensors that adhere to leaf surfaces and a stretchable band that wraps around stems. Together, they track two vital signs of plant life—the temperature and humidity beneath the leaf’s surface, and whether the stem is still growing. Even more striking, the system runs without an external battery, scavenging power from moisture evaporating from the plant itself.

“The larger promise is not merely that one plant can wear one sensor,” said Sameer Sonkusale, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tufts and senior researcher in the project. “It is that fields could one day contain networks of plant-level monitors, each reporting early signs of thirst, salt stress, disease or nutrient imbalance. Satellites and drones already give farmers a bird’s-eye view. Plant wearables could provide something more intimate: the plant’s-eye view.”

Current methods in monitoring crops use satellite imagery and drones to get visible, infrared, and microwave data that map out greenness, uneven growth, temperature, pest damage, soil moisture, and other big picture measurements of crop stress. Soil sensors can measure moisture, temperature, pH, and some nutrient levels. And weather stations provide information on air temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind, and sun exposure.

While those measurements are useful, they focus on conditions that may affect the crops in the future or an assessment of damage already done. “The leaf sensor is more of an early warning system showing how the plant is responding in the moment, before visible signs appear,” said Nafize Hossain, a graduate student at Tufts who led the research in the Sonkusale lab.

The sensors can also be extended to track other important indicators of plant health, such as levels of important nutrients and plant hormones that are early signals of root, leaf, stem, and fruit growth, as well as response to pathogens.

Stress Trackers

Resembling a temporary tattoo, the leaf sensor is thin, flexible, and can sit on uneven surfaces, allowing the plant to breathe and bend in the wind without damaging it. “Other plant sensors exist, but their ability to track multiple stressors and growth-related parameters is limited,” said Hossain, “and the technology often relies on external batteries, which complicate field deployment.”

The sensor first developed by the researchers provides information on the “vapor pressure deficit,” or VPD. It’s a technical term, but it describes something very intuitive—how likely the air is to pull water from the plant. When VPD is high, the air is dry and pulls moisture from leaves more aggressively. Plants respond by closing their stomata, the tiny pores that regulate gas exchange and water loss. That can protect them from dehydration, but it also slows photosynthesis and growth.

The Tufts leaf moisture sensor uses vanadium pentoxide crystals separated into extremely thin “nanosheets.” The nanosheets are stacked into layers and arranged in a membrane. Another layer of graphene (made of carbon atoms) forms a sieve to let moisture through from the plant to the nanosheets. When that happens, the water forms ions, which sweep through sheets creating a current—and voila, it’s not only a sensor, but also a battery. The level of the current is directly proportional to the amount of moisture exchange with the air.

The power is tiny—microwatts—but enough, with low-power electronics and energy storage to support periodic sensing.

The stem-based device borrows from kirigami, the Japanese art of cutting paper so it can stretch and deform in controlled ways. The sensor is coated with a eutectogel, a soft, ion-conducting gel that changes electrical resistance as the stem expands or contracts. In healthy growth, the stem diameter tends to increase. Under stress, growth may slow or the stem may even shrink.

Pairing the two types of sensors is important, because plants can show stress on more than one time scale. Leaf sensors, for example, can show if the plant is facing immediate conditions that drive water loss, while stem growth captures a slower biological process.

In tests on bell pepper plants, the system distinguished healthy plants from plants facing water deficit and salinity stress. Healthy plants showed rhythmic VPD changes over time, following normal daily cycles of air moisture.

Water-stressed plants showed a rising VPD trend. Salinity-stressed plants showed a different pattern, with reduced VPD compared with controls, likely linked to altered water uptake and stomatal behavior. Meanwhile, the stem sensor tracked growth in healthy plants and shrinking or reduced diameter in stressed plants.

The sensors are built with field conditions in mind. The leaf sensor is designed to tolerate bending and stretching, while ethe stem sensor’s kirigami pattern helps distribute strain and reduces the effects of abrupt disturbances like strong winds.

The team is currently working on a fully functional wireless communication platform for the sensors using LoRa (long range) or Bluetooth-based communication standards.

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Journal

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

DOI

10.1021/acsami.6c03190 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

In-Planta Tattoo and Kirigami Sensors for Moisture-Powered Monitoring of Vapor Pressure Deficit and Growth Dynamics

Roots steer clear of plant rot

Newly identified ‘saprotropism’ helps roots avoid decaying plant matter—but not animal decay

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Institute of Science and Technology Austria

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The roots of plants bend away from decaying plant material (in the center). This process—newly identified by researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and Northwest A&F University in China—is called saprotropism, derived from the Greek term “sapro” for “rotten”. 

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Credit: © Bao et al. / Science

Decaying matter shapes life in soil, but it can also create hostile zones for growing roots. Professor Jiří Friml of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and international collaborators have now identified “saprotropism,” a root response that guides plants away from decaying plant-derived matter—but not animal-derived decay. The study, led by Yuzhou Zhang, Professor at Northwest A&F University in China and published in Science, reveals how roots adapt their growth direction by sensing local pH gradients around rot.

Plants cannot run away from danger or toward something they desire. Instead, they adjust the direction in which they grow. Shoots bend toward light (a well-known phenomenon called phototropism), roots and shoots use gravity to grow downward and upward, respectively (gravitropism), and roots can also bend toward water (hydrotropism). These directional growth responses, known as plant tropisms, help plants navigate changing environments. Now, researchers from China and Austria describe a new member of this family: saprotropism, from “sapro”, meaning rotten or decaying.

“Going beyond the classic tropisms such as gravitropism, phototropism, and hydrotropism was Yuzhou’s idea,” says co-author Jiří Friml, professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). “As an alum of my group at ISTA, he took this question further and identified saprotropism, as well as the mechanisms behind it.”

Saprotropism: Don’t touch dead plants, it’s yucky!

The researchers first showed that direct contact with decaying plant tissue strongly inhibited root growth and activated defense pathways linked to immunity and pathogens. In other words, roots treated these decay zones as biologically threatening environments.

“Animals instinctively avoid rotten food because it often harbors harmful microbes,” says corresponding author Yuzhou Zhang, Professor at Northwest A&F University in China and an alum of the Friml group at ISTA. “We wondered whether plants, although immobile, might have evolved a comparable strategy below ground.”

And, in fact, they do: The newly identified tropism enables roots to actively bend away from decaying plant matter. In experiments, roots avoided decay zones made from ‘fleshy’ matter such as apples or leaves, and—contrary to initial assumptions—also from woody material such as sawdust.

Dead animals don’t bother plants

However, when the researchers tested animal-derived decay, such as small pieces of chicken meat, the roots showed no directional growth response.

“One of the striking findings was therefore that the roots did not simply avoid anything rotten,” says Friml. “They responded specifically to decomposing plant material. This tells us that saprotropism is not a general reaction to rot, but a dedicated response to plant-derived decay.”

The response was observed not only in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, but also in crop species including rapeseed, tomato, and wheat—suggesting that saprotropism is widespread among plants.

Watching the effects of a tiny ‘plant graveyard’

The team found that a key signal comes from microorganisms, especially fungi, as they break down dead plant material. During decomposition, fungi release acidic metabolites, including organic and phenolic acids. These compounds diffuse into the surrounding soil and create stable local pH gradients around the decaying material. Roots can detect this acidity pattern even before direct contact and use it as directional information, bending away from the more acidic side.

However, the ‘plant graveyard’ does not send a permanent warning signal—it stops automatically after the matter has turned into soil. “Once the plant material had almost fully broken down, the acidic warning signal faded—and the roots stopped bending away,” explains Zhang.

To study the process under controlled conditions, the researchers used a vertical split-agar system—a flat, upright plate in which different agar media create a defined chemical gradient. As roots grow downward along the plate, scientists can observe whether they bend toward or away from a specific cue, such as acidity connected with decay.

“At ISTA, we have used similar systems for many years to study how roots grow toward water,” says Friml. A specialized vertical microscope had been constructed at the Institute for that specific purpose. “Now, that same setup helped reveal the opposite response—roots growing away from a potentially harmful cue. Unlike other tropisms, the key player here isn’t the plant hormone auxin.”

Roots dance to the sound of ABA

Within the root, an external signal is transformed into a growth decision: Cells on the root surface detect that one side of the root is exposed to stronger acidity than the other. This uneven signal changes the distribution of the plant hormone abscisic acid, or ABA, across the root tip. As a result, the internal framework of root cells is rearranged, causing one side of the root to grow differently than the other. The root then bends away from the decaying plant material.

“Our research shows that decaying plant matter is not just a passive source of nutrients,” Zhang states. “It creates a chemical landscape that roots can read. Saprotropism shows how plants interpret microbial activity in the soil and make growth decisions accordingly.”

Fundamental science with relevance for agriculture and food security

The discovery of saprotropism—a term coined by the study authors—opens up new research avenues, such as how roots interpret microbial activity in soil. In the long term, a better understanding of such root behaviors could help inform approaches in agriculture, soil management, and crop resilience.

“Crop culture practices that involve excessive incorporation of undecomposed crop residues can create large decay zones that exceed the root's capacity to navigate around them, potentially increasing exposure to harmful microbes and promoting root diseases,” explains Zhang. Understanding the molecular basis of saprotropism opens new opportunities to develop crops with enhanced ability to detect and avoid pathogen-rich environments. “In the future, breeding or engineering varieties with stronger ‘decay-avoidance’ capacity could complement conventional disease resistance strategies by preventing root-pathogen encounters before infection occurs,” he sums up. 

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adw6568 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Roots navigate around decay regions by sensing local pH gradients

Article Publication Date

9-Jul-2026

 

Fungi and other microbes break down dead plant material in the soil. By doing so, they release acidic chemicals that spread outward like a warning signal. Nearby roots sense this acidic zone before touching the decay and bend away from it. 

 

The process in detail: A molecular framework for root saprotropism guiding navigation around microbial decay. Microbial decay establishes a soil microenvironment characterized by stable acidic pH gradients. This pH asymmetry is sensed by the epidermal pH sensor, RGF-RGFR peptide-receptor module, which converts it into asymmetric abscisic acid (ABA) distribution. ABA asymmetry drives microtubule-dependent anisotropic cell expansion and handed root twisting, ultimately steering roots away from hostile decay zones.  

 

Plants bend their roots away from a rotten apple, leaf, and even sawdust. The response was observed not only in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, but also in crop species including rapeseed, tomato, and wheat—suggesting that saprotropism is widespread among plants. 

 

When the researchers tested animal-derived decay, in this case rotten chicken, the roots showed no directional growth response.

 

ISTA Professor Jiří Friml with the mouse-ear cress (A. thaliana) — his research group’s main model organism. 

Credit

© FWF/Luiza Puiu

 

Could acupuncture to the ear help to relieve migraines?

Federation of European Neuroscience Societies

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Auriculotherapy for a migraine patient

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Credit: Please credit Fernanda Belle

Barcelona, Spain: Acupuncture to the ear may help to lessen pain from migraines and their impact on daily life, according to new research presented today (Friday) at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026 [1].

A randomised clinical trial of the treatment, called auriculotherapy, found that migraines were less painful immediately after the treatment and 30 days later, compared with the pain experienced before treatment. The impact of migraines on daily life also improved.

In addition, the researchers, led by Fernanda Belle, a physiotherapist in the Experimental Neuroscience laboratory at the University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL), Palhoça, Brazil, observed changes in oxygenation levels in the prefrontal cortex of the brain over the course of the study, as measured by hemoencephalography (HEG®), which is a non-invasive technology using near-infrared spectroscopy to measure blood flow in the brain, and is an indirect measure of neural activity.

However, although these were all statistically significant improvements when comparing the 68 women in the trial before and after the treatment, there was no statistically significant difference between the 34 women receiving auriculotherapy and the 34 who received the sham treatment.

Ms Belle said: “Both groups improved over time, which may suggest that auricular stimulation, even when non-specific, can influence pain-related outcomes. However, at this stage, we cannot conclude that auriculotherapy was superior to the sham procedure.

“In the HEG® assessment, we identified changes in the average oxygenation levels of the prefrontal cortex over the course of the study, as well as differences between the groups, but the pattern of change over time was not clearly distinct between the two groups. However, the results are important because they show that it is possible to objectively monitor aspects of brain function in women with chronic migraine.

“Overall, these results are encouraging, especially because we observed improvement in clinical outcomes during follow-up, with a more consistent effect on pain in the group that received auriculotherapy. This suggests that auriculotherapy may be an interesting complementary strategy in the care of chronic migraine. We are reassessing these preliminary results in a larger group of women.”

Ms Belle has personal experience of migraines as she and members of her family suffer from them. So she wanted to explore options for improving the care for other people facing the same problem.

“Migraine is a highly prevalent and disabling condition, and many patients do not achieve adequate symptom control with conventional treatments alone. It also affects women approximately three times more often than men, probably due in part to hormonal influences, and it represents an important cause of disability,” she said.

Ms Belle recruited 68 women to her study who had had a clinical diagnosis of migraine for at least one year. All the patients experienced migraines on 15 or more days a month. Migraines were characterised by recurrent moderate to severe headaches, accompanied by other symptoms such as nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, and sometimes aura – a neurological symptom that can include visual disturbances such as flashing lights or zigzag lines.

The researchers assessed pain via the McGill Pain Questionnaire, and the impact on daily life using the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6) at three time points: before the patients started treatment, immediately after the treatment, and 30 days later.

The patients were randomly assigned to receive eight sessions of auriculotherapy or the sham treatment over eight weeks. Auriculotherapy involved the use of semi-permanent needles to stimulate specific points on the ear selected according to the protocol for migraine. Afterwards, mustard seeds were applied to the same points to maintain the stimulation until the next session. The sham procedure involved the application of semi-permanent needles to ear points that were not related to migraine, but corresponded to the fingers, wrist, knee, arm, shoulder, lung, lower limbs and spine. Mustard seeds were also applied to these points.

Patients did not know which procedure they were having, the therapist did, but the outcome assessors and those conducting the statistical analysis were blinded as to which group the women had been allocated. The researchers carried out physiological assessments in the brain using HEG®, which involves having small sensors attached to the patients’ heads to measure blood flow and oxygenation.

In the auriculotherapy group, the average pain score decreased from 50.5 before the sessions, to 44.7 immediately after the sessions, and to 41 after 30 days. This represented a reduction in pain of approximately 11% at the end of the treatment and 18% at the 30-day follow-up.

In the group receiving the sham procedure, the pain scores also decreased from 50.2 before the sessions to 44.3 immediately after the sessions and to 43.9 after 30 days, representing reductions of approximately 12% and 13%, respectively. At the 30-day follow-up, pain scores were significantly lower than before treatment in both groups. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the groups, meaning that the study could not show that auriculotherapy was superior to the sham procedure.

“We also observed a reduction in the impact of migraine on daily life,” said Ms Belle. “In the auriculotherapy group, the average HIT-6 score decreased from 66.1 before the sessions to 60.7 immediately after the sessions and to 59.5 at 30 days. In the sham group, the average score decreased from 65.8 to 59.2 after the sessions and was 59.3 at 30 days. Across both groups, this represents reductions of approximately 8% to 10%.

“Both groups improved over time, which may suggest that auricular stimulation, even when non-specific, can influence pain-related outcomes. However, at this stage, we cannot conclude that the auriculotherapy protocol was superior to the sham procedure. As this is a preliminary analysis from an ongoing study, the findings should be interpreted with caution and will be reassessed in a larger sample.”

In addition to studying auriculotherapy in a larger group of women, Ms Belle and her colleagues are also investigating the mechanisms that may explain how auriculotherapy acts in the body.

“Migraine is a complex condition involving neurovascular, autonomic and neuroinflammatory changes. The ear has strong links to networks of nerve cells, including connections with the vagus nerve, the trigeminal nerve and cervical nerves, which are involved in pain regulation, autonomic activity and inflammatory responses,” she said. “One of our hypotheses is that auriculotherapy may influence the so-called neuroimmune axis – a two-way communication system between the nervous and immune systems, modulating processes related to pain sensitisation and inflammation.”

Professor Christina Dalla from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, is chair of the FENS Forum communication committee and was not involved in the research. she said: “Migraine is a debilitating condition that can have a major impact on people’s lives, especially women’s lives. Well-conducted, randomised controlled trials of the condition are rare so, as a neuropsychopharmacologist, I am pleased that this study is being presented at the FENS Forum, as it has a rigorous methodology and careful assessment of the participants throughout the follow-up period. I look forward to seeing the results of auriculotherapy in a larger number of participants. It is important to emphasise that this a potential treatment that is complementary to existing migraine therapies, and not a replacement for them.”

(ends)

Notes

[1] “Auriculotherapy modulates cerebral hemodynamics and pain in women with migraine: a randomized double-blind trial”, by Fernanda Belle, Poster session 07 – Late breaking abstracts, 9:30-13:00 hrs CEST, Friday 10 July, poster area: https://fens2026.abstractserver.com/program/#/details/presentations/5399

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Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Auriculotherapy modulates cerebral hemodynamics and pain in women with migraine: a randomized double-blind trial

Article Publication Date

10-Jul-2026

 

Auriculotherapy for a migraine patient showing the semi-permanent needles in place.

 

Mustard seeds held in place with high-adhesion medical tape for a migraine patient receiving auriculotherapy

Credit

Please credit Fernanda Belle

Could acupuncture to the ear help to relieve migraines? [VIDEO]