Name: Pandemic Generation: Kids in Crisis
Uploaded: 2022-04-20T19:26:00-0400
Duration: 1341165
Description: The latest WRAL Documentary, "Pandemic Generation: Kids in Crisis," shines a light on the real, lasting impacts of remote learning, quarantine and the uncertainty our kids have endured over the past two years.

It's that time of year when your child will be taking end-of-grade tests or EOGs. What are EOGs and how can you help them be better prepared?

End-of-grade tests: Everything you need to know about these annual exams

Student testing 

Triangle residents who are fans of thrills and themed attractions don't have to travel far to experience some of the best.

Guide: Amusement parks within driving distance of Raleigh

New Carowinds rollercoaster nears opening date

The latest WRAL Documentary, "Pandemic Generation: Kids in Crisis," shines a light on the real, lasting impacts of remote learning, quarantine and the uncertainty our kids have endured over the past two years.

<p>it's spring in north Carolina, the world feels a little more normal. Covid cases are going down. But health experts say one thing from the pandemic won't be going away, What it did to our kids. I just couldn't be myself in isolation I guess. I sort of felt trapped while adults thought about masks, mandates in the vaccine. Young people listened and took it all in. My dad was on the front lines for covid patients, most of them at home or in their rooms for two years. My bedroom was probably a gift and a curse because I spent so much time in here. Everybody's going back to in person school wasn't easy either. Mhm. One in five, young people experienced anxiety or depression. One in five. I definitely deal with anxiety and I became somewhat depressed. And now suicide is the leading cause of death for Children ages 10-14. What do we do now? The part that we're going to struggle with for quite some time is the mental health piece. Why is it so hard to connect kids who need help with that help? It's complicated by a lack of workforce. How can we help them? Is the state doing enough? I would like to address our policymakers. These middle and high school students from across north Carolina agreed to sit down and talk about covid the pandemic and their mental health. These experts did too. It is absolutely crisis. This is the pandemic generation. Mhm. Okay. Who wants to go first. Okay. Have a seat right there. Yeah, that's perfect. We're going to do? Great. Thank you so much for doing this all the way around, what was it like to be a kid during all of this, It doesn't feel like it actually happened. It kind of feels like I wasn't even in fifth grade two years ago. It feels like it was a whole lifetime ago. Feels like it feels like I went through a portal and time stayed the same, but now like everything's different. So it's a little bit weird. It's just like everything is different. The world is a different place basically those years that we went through, they're gone. I don't remember them. It was kind of lonely because when we were online a lot of people didn't want to have to turn their cameras on and meet themselves and talk to say the least. Probably stressful. Mhm. Pretty isolated to. Do you feel like a different person from when it started until now? Yes. Spiritually, mentally and physically. Do you think adults realize how hard this was on kids, all they said was this is an unprecedented time. I'm like, yes, but adults, they know kind of how to deal with life a little more because they lived through other stuff before and we haven't what was the hardest part of these last two years, not being able to see family or friends every day. I think I'd stay in P. J. Is just about more than half the day until like one of my parents came home for their lunch break and told me to change, you know, stressing about my grandparents and if they were going to get sick, I think that really that kept me up at night for sure. I was in the middle of a soccer season and then it was just like it was like a snap of a finger and it just stopped. I think for me it was just the uncertainty of the pandemic, Everything was just up in the air and you didn't know what's going to happen, you don't know if you're gonna go back to school at the start, He didn't know if you could see your friends grocery stores max at the beginning, we missed out on so many opportunities, what would I give to live? I was in a musical, I was Ariel in The Little MeRmaid a week before we were going to perform. All my family had tickets and everything just completely shut down. And I remember that day very distinctly when I didn't have contact with a lot of people, I kind of felt left out and I began to feel kind of isolated and a little bit hopeless because I stopped seeing people, I stopped going out. I um kind of it became easier to stay in and just be alone. I guess it wasn't good for me. It was just too much isolation and it was too fast, it was too sudden and I think getting you know out of my bedroom and back into the world was a little harder than it should have been because I was so used to being by myself. The hardest part was just um finally talking to people again after you've been in quarantine for so long and you haven't really been such a with anybody. I definitely think it felt weird coming back. I definitely noticed people like they acted a little bit different than they had before in person school, to um online school and then to hybrid school and then to like school with masks on. I think having to go back to doing these like, normal day things and normal people things has been pretty hard and it's pretty anxiety inducing. I definitely experienced anxiety. I I wasn't sure who I was anymore, so I just didn't know how I was gonna like, reintegrate myself into the community. I didn't, I didn't know how it was all going to work. I worry that we're gonna all be socially awkward and we aren't really gonna know who we are, where we fit in. And that might lead to a whole new road of mental health issues for the future across the state. We're hearing from parents were hearing from pediatricians, uh sort of skyrocketing numbers of Children who have anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and we simply don't have the services in place to care for the Children Before, maybe it was one child in the classroom, one in 20 would have something that really rose to the level of a clinical clinical symptom and now it's one in five. And so that I think that scale is hard for us to understand and to, to sit with a lot of the experts we talked to said anxiety and depression really increased among young people like one in five, did you experience that? And if so, what was that like, I experienced a lot of anxiety during the pandemic? Yes. Um I was diagnosed before the pandemic though, I definitely deal with anxiety. Yeah, I am actually diagnosed with anxiety and depression and I have to take medication for it and I think that I started with my medication one Covid hit because it was pretty manageable until the point when Covid hit and that's when everything kind of just went downhill from there became somewhat depressed, I just like you know lying around in bed and just being completely alone became normal for me and you know, anxiety was something that became an issue definitely. So everything kind of had like a great shade on it. I think anxiety and depression and mental health, like it comes from being alone and in your head and by yourself and in the pandemic, that's like a physical like real representation of how that is in your head. What did it feel like having anxiety during the pandemic, It was just kind of like this like wait, that was on you and like um you don't know how to lift it, dread all the time and stomachaches and headaches and sweaty palms and um that's sort of like the general feeling of like just always feeling a little bit sick, which is scary during a pandemic. It was probably there before the pandemic, but the pandemic really made me grapple with how I was feeling. I think that not all of that came from the pandemic. I think it just pulled back the curtain. I think that there has always been anxiety and depression in teens and that first the stigma is starting to come off and that kind of aligned with the timing. Covid numbers are going down. Is this going to go away? It could be a lifetime thing that a lot of these kids are gonna be facing. I think that we're really going to have to dig in. If not we're gonna be in this for a long, long time. This sounds so dire. What can parents do? I think a parent has an incredibly powerful role with their child. What have these last two years been like as a mom um challenging painful uh and a new lesson and resilience as a mom of two teenage boys. I really truly understand what it is to be navigating this and and still trying to get through adolescence. It's been two years now. So a five year old, it's been 40% of their lifespan, which is remarkable as kids get older, they start thinking, is that, is there a future for me? And so that's where we're seeing some increases in suicidal ideation. I mean you're crying. I've been a parent who is really um I watched her kids struggle and it's heartbreaking and it's hard and again we have resources. So my kids were able to get resources, then they're fine. But a lot of kids don't have those resources. The hard thing is just as we're seeing more and more need for mental health, we're also seeing fewer and fewer mental health services available. The workforce was inadequate for what we had before the pandemic and now the need is tripled or quadrupled. I think our mental health system is really overburdened. There's just no opening. So we don't have enough mental health clinicians who are trained and who are open and available to take new clients and help young people. So There are about 26,000 licensed behavioral professionals in North Carolina and that includes social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors Marriage and family therapists and addiction professionals. The need has skyrocketed there. Wait lists are about 3-6 months long and it's even higher for those in rural areas in the triangle. People are struggling to find providers. I can only imagine what it's like in the rural areas. So for someone to Be told, you know, you're going to be on a wait list for 10 months and that you just are going to have to wait it out until someone possibly becomes available. That can be very detrimental to someone. Most counties have done over 60 counties have no child psychiatrists, why are there so few? I think that it is related to training and the ability to have a system, a health system that supports physicians in this field. Other states like texas have actually invested in a dramatic increase funding and supporting child psychiatry trading keep hearing. There are not enough people to help kids with mental health. Why is that payment has a great deal to do with it providers and my association have been fighting for years to get adequate reimbursement for their services because it's time consuming to conduct a mental health visit. Maybe I can see five patients an hour. They might just see one patient an hour and I'll guarantee you their payment is not five times what mine is for an office visit and we need to look at that literally the insurance companies, both private, federal and state funded paying providers. They're worth, We also don't have in schools where kids are enough support, health support, mental health support staff to really help kids. The way we address it is addressing Children where they are in schools. I wish more mental health services, especially in schools where more accessible to students. I feel like we should have more counselors and people that like have a lot of knowledge about mental health helping us when kids are struggling with mental health issues, they often go to nurses first or so. The school social workers and the school social workers were also overwhelmed because there's just not enough of them in our schools. Mm hmm. So the ratio is really out of control. We have just not seen the legislature invest in the schools the way that our kids need them to. I would like to address our policymakers and say that they need to increase accessibility to mental health care so that our communities can all heal because it's gonna be impossible to support the Children in the upcoming generations if we're not on a solid foundation. This sounds so dire. What can parents do? I think parents need to trust their intuition. So if they are worried about their child changes in behavior changes in mood, they definitely should talk to their pediatrician or family physician. I know that if they contact me their primary care physician, I have some inroads with the system that they don't have. And also making sure that you're keeping the lines of communication open with your child. So we as adults actually have to start that conversation. So listening asking how does it feel? I know that sounds sort of you know coming from a psychologist and how does that make you feel? But we do need to ask that question and a lot of times that fear that stigma is hindering people from getting the help that they need. So just making mental health a normal conversation in schools and in your family could be very life saving for someone, my son and my daughter, their generation are very open about talking about their feelings and in some ways they model what good looks like for her father and myself. Because I feel like older generations kind of like still see mental health as a like almost an anomaly. But I feel like for most people my age, it's like everyone and their mother has some form of anxiety here um deals with that. That's what's giving me hope through all of this is that they are talking about mental health. They are saying we're not going to let these kind of burdens of previous generations wear us down. Why do you think it's good to talk about? It just tells you that you're not alone knowing that I wasn't like the only one I wasn't really struggling on my own. I really don't think I would have been this open before the pandemic. I think my community around me has normalized feeling depressed, anxious, stressed, whatever it may be, just listening, listening to them. Um, they're struggling with a lot and sometimes we want to go in and fix and make it better for them. But sometimes all that's needed is, you know, a listening heir. I think just adults. Just listen if somebody, if your child needs to vent to you or just needs to talk to you about something, put down the distractions and just listen, we don't need you to fix the situation. We just need you to listen. What gives you help. This has been a bad experience for us, but I know that we can get past it. Like we can use what we've learned to get better. Mhm. Have a seat right there. You're gonna do great. Okay, alright. Here we go. What would you say to parents watching who want to help their kids? I think it's really important that your child knows that they're not alone. Just let your kids know that you understand what they're going through and try to see it from their point of view. And also to cut us a little bit of slack because it was definitely a rough um two years for us to have to go through, especially at a lot of us went through. That's a pretty young age. I don't think anybody else can really understand what our generation I went through because nobody else, it hasn't happened to other people really. And what would you say to parents right now watching? I would say one all of the Children are struggling. This is not inherently you, this is not inherently your child. Everyone struggles. It just manifests in different ways. We've all heard. Well, Children are really resilient, but just because most Children are resilient doesn't mean we don't do anything and we're just now starting to talk about how big of a challenge this is going to be. And I just hope we're ready to do what we need to do in terms of investing and building the services for the kids. If we just keep doing the same thing we've always done, I think we're gonna have numbers that are much worse. What gives you hope moving forward? I think just seeing how the numbers are declining and all of the medical and factual evidence that there is, covid numbers are going down and that things are gonna get a little bit closer to getting better. Um and just that we're gonna come together a little bit more. I think what gives me hope is that people are starting to figure out what this all is and it's settling down a little bit, but we did this, I mean it came out of nowhere and we got it under control as best we could, but I think we're all gonna be okay, just kind of cross my fingers that everything will get better eventually. What gives me hope is just my family and my friends because we are surrounded by a lot of love and support helps me keep going when I feel like I can't this has been a bad experience for us, but I know that we can get past it. Like we can use what we've learned to get better the last couple of years have been, you know, they came with a lot of challenges. But I think that our generation in our country in general is healing and we are going to come out of this stronger. I really am not worried about my generation because I think that this pandemic has instilled resiliency within us. Like I think like it's really nice to see and realize like through it all, like we're still growing up and being kids and getting older. Um and that's pretty nice. Pretty hopeful. I'm proud of myself, proud of us and teenagers. It will get better. Mhm, mm hmm. Yeah, Yeah. Thank you so much. Are you so proud, jellyfish. So good, so good. Thank you. You did great. Thank you. Thank you so much. So good. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, that's it.</p>

Sydney Franklin

Jay Jennings

Cristin Severance

Pandemic Generation: Kids in Crisis

WRAL Doc: Pandemic Generation

WRAL-TV News Broadcasts: Watch each newscast live or watch the most recent newscast on demand.

WRAL Late News 

Get the latest WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast whenever you need it, including the DUALDoppler5000 and the 7-Day Forecast.

I'm meteorologist, Amy Weu in the WRL severe weather center, only a 20% chance of rain today. And that's gonna be mainly in our southern counties this afternoon and this evening. So most will stay dry today. It's dry Thursday, dry Friday. But then over the weekend rain chances go up, it's about a 60% chance Saturday, a 70% chance Sunday it won't rain the entire day, both of those days. But I do think we at least have a good chance for some scattered showers and storms. Both of those days. We'll get some high resolution model data starting tomorrow. And hopefully we'll have a better idea of the timeline for today. Again, the best chance would be in the afternoon and evening in our southern counties. So south of the triangle and it's only a 20% chance for rain. So again, most will stay dry today, it will be dry and feeling like summertime tomorrow and Friday, high temperatures getting close to 90 both days. And then over the week, we do have the potential for rain on Saturday, it looks like the morning could stay dry, which would be great news for the Coen Race for the Cure. We're a proud sponsor of that event, so we're hoping that it stays dry for sure. But then as we get to the afternoon and evening, a little unsettled, we'll have some scattered showers, maybe a few thunderstorms on Sunday morning, a few showers in the morning, but a better chance for some of those scattered showers and storms heading into the second half of the day and some of that rain will linger into Monday as well. Monday appears fairly unsettled with scattered showers and a few thunderstorms and we could even have a few storms on Tuesday as well around town. Today, we do not expect any rain for most locations. It's only a 20% chance 84 for the high in Raleigh and Durham, 84 for the high in Fayetteville as well. So it's a warm day out there for outdoor practices this evening. It looks pretty good. Just that slim chance for rain, especially down to the south will be at 82 by 5 p.m. 79 at 6 p.m. and then down into the low to mid seventies by 8 p.m. So overall it looks pretty good, could have a little bit of patchy fog overnight tonight. And then tomorrow it's warm 88 with mostly sunny skies, 89 on Friday and then we're dodging some rain and storms over the weekend and that trend continues into Monday and Tuesday of next week.

WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast

More than 50,000 applicants didn’t receive an Opportunity Scholarship for next year, after eligibility was opened to all incomes and existing private school students.

NC lawmakers debate whether to increase funding for private school vouchers

Daytime Pick 3 and Pick 4 drawings are held at 3 p.m. daily. They can be seen as live or on-demand video.

Good afternoon. I'm Louis Fernandez. Welcome to this afternoon's drawings for Wednesday. May 1st 2024. Let's get started with Carolina pick three and the first pick three number is zero. The second is seven and the third is three and our pick three fireball number is three. Joining me for this afternoon's drawing is our auditor from mcconnell and Jones L LP. Now let's move to Carolina pick four. The first pick four number is four. The second is five. The third is zero and the fourth is zero and our pick four. Fireball number is seven. The North Carolina Education Lottery has contributed over $10 billion to education. Thanks for your support. Get your winning numbers each day at 3 p.m. and again at 11:22 p.m. here in your exclusive station for North Carolina Education Lottery. Thanks for playing.

Daytime Pick 3 and Pick 4 Drawing

NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker holds a press conference to discuss action taken at the spring board of directors meeting, including around realignment.

NCHSAA holds press conference following spring board meeting

State lawmakers are proposing legislation that would force sheriffs to work more closely with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Democratic sheriffs in North Carolina’s biggest counties say that could do more harm than good to public safety.

Protesters challenge NC lawmakers who want to force sheriffs to work with federal immigration officers

The N.C. High School Athletic Association Board of Directors will conclude its spring meeting on Wednesday with a series of reports and votes in Chapel Hill.

NCHSAA Board of Directors meeting wraps Wednesday with series of votes

Nightly N.C. Education Lottery drawings during the 11 p.m. News.

Hi there. It's time for tonight's lottery drawings for Tuesday, April 30th, 2024. Let's get started with the Carolina pick three. Our first winning number tonight is eight, followed by three, third pick three tonight. Zero and our pick three. Fireball number is nine. Joining me for tonight's drawing is our auditor from mcconnell and Jones L LP. And now it's time for the Carolina pick four. Check your tickets. Good luck. Seven is our first winning pick for tonight. Followed by one third, winning number three. Fourth pick four is five and our pick four fireball number tonight is eight. Let's turn now to the Carolina cash five. If no one matches all five numbers to win the jackpot tonight, tomorrow's top prize is an estimated $130,000. Good luck first winning cash five tonight. 17 by 23. 3rd winning number 19. Our fourth cash five tonight. 14 and good luck. Our final winning number is 43. The North Carolina Education Lottery has contributed over $10 billion to education. Thanks for your support and get the winning numbers every night right here on your exclusive station for the North Carolina education lottery. Thanks for playing.

Pandemic Generation: Kids in Crisis

More On This

WRAL Doc: Pandemic Generation

'Pandemic Generation: Kids in Crisis' shows young people's struggle with morale, purpose during COVID-19

Pandemic's impact on children's mental health is subject of latest WRAL Doc

Raising awareness part of family's healing process after losing loved one to suicide

Related Topics

More Videos