In December 2023, the Co-SPACE team held a successful five-day international consortium meeting (https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/covid-19-supporting-parents-adolescents-and-children-during-epidemics-co-space-international-consortium-meeting.html) at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. The workshop was attended by international collaborators from around the world, including from Australia, Denmark, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, and Turkey, as well as Dutch young people and clinicians.
During the workshop, we discussed our global findings and experiences, such as different approaches to school closures and potential links to post-pandemic school absenteeism, particularly vulnerable groups, modifiable protective factors, and similarities between pandemic experiences and other public health crises. We also planned how the international Co-SPACE consortium data and insights can be used to inform future policy and strategies that prioritise young people’s mental health before, during and after public health crises.
The workshop also included many wonderful poster presentations from the teams around the world. Well done to the following researchers for their posters:
- Arlen Rowe ‘Child and Adolescent Mental Health Trajectories in Australia throughout the COVID-19 pandemic’
- Elcin Sakmar ‘The association between pre-pandemic maternal well-being and children’s mental health difficulties during the pandemic’
- Martha Oakes ‘Exploring transactional associations in parent-child mental health over one year of the Covid-19 pandemic’
- Mila Hayixibayi ‘Trends in digital mental health service (BRAVE Self-Help Program) utilisation for child and adolescent anxiety from 2015 to 2023 in Australia’
- Mohsen Rajabi ‘“I can no longer manage my child at home”: A qualitative study exploring the impact of the COVID-19 school closures on children with SEND in Iran’
- Nikita Marie Sørensen ‘Mental health in Danish families during COVID-19. Organising data and preliminary analyses of the complete dataset’
- Vuslat Şeker Akın ‘The Reflections of Covid-19 Pandemic to the Family Life in Türkiye’
- Zarina Thasneem Zainudeen ‘Psychosocial impact of Covid-19 pandemic on Malaysian families: a cross-sectional study’
Congratulations to Alimila Hayixibayi from the University of Southern Queensland for their poster for winning the early career research poster prize! Well done to our current Co-SPACE UK research assistant Martha Oakes and our ex-research assistant Lowrie Burgess who were Highly Commended for their poster.
The organising team comprised Dr Simona Skripkauskaite (University of Oxford), Dr Jennifer McMahon (University of Limerick), Dr Madelon Hendricx-Riem (Radboud University), Prof Wendy Silverman (Yale University) and Prof Mikael Thastum (Aarhus University). Yet, a big ‘thank you’ also to the Lorentz Center for providing funding and support for this meeting.
