Objective Assess the psychological impact during lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in children and adolescents in Tunisia. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study by telephone with a sample of 514 Tunisian households between the 10th and the 24thof August 2020.We included parents of children aged between 5 and 15 years old, who consented to participate in the study. Collected data included socio-demographic and general features and items related to setting up routines and adaptive containment measures. A questionnaire with 26 items was developed to assess anxiety, emotional and behavioral symptoms. Results Approximately half of the respondents (51%) were mothers and 51.6% of the children were male.More than one third of the parents (36.2%) were aged between 36 and 45 years old. Almost a quarter of fathers (23.9%) continued to work during lockdown as prior to COVID-19.Parents reported depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms and behavioral manifestations respectively in 38.7%, 69.8% and 61.9% of their children. Depressive symptoms, sleep disturbances and eating disturbances were significantly associated with the female gender of the child (respectively p=0.002, p=0.034 and p=0.011).Children having, their parents or them, somatic chronic illnesses had more somatic complaints (p=0.037). Those whose fathers continued to work during lockdown had shown more positive attitude to COVID-19 pandemic (p=0.027). Children having anxiety symptoms had shown more positive attitude towards COVID-19 pandemic (p=0.002) however those with depressive symptoms did not (p=0.19). Conclusions The results of our study could lead to develop recommendations for children and adolescents in the future context of pandemic in order to avoid negative psychological repercussions.
Hamouda et al. (Mon,) studied this question.