May is National Mental Health Awareness Month. During this month, my ECHO colleagues and I join the national conversation to raise awareness about mental health, and I’m pleased to highlight two recent examples of our research in this area.

Positive health, or a child’s sense of well-being, is one of ECHO’s five health outcome focus areas. For ECHO, this means that in addition to looking at what diseases or conditions kids get, like asthma, obesity, and autism spectrum disorders, we also look at the positive side of the ledger. In fact, ECHO research shows that kids can feel quite satisfied with their lives even if they have one or more of those conditions. In a recent collaborative publication, ECHO researchers showed that life satisfaction was about the same among kids with and without most childhood chronic diseases. The main exceptions were depression and conditions with chronic pain. These findings raise the possibility that efforts to support mental health treatment could also improve children’s sense of well-being.

In another collaborative effort, ECHO Program investigators came together to study how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the well-being of children. As detailed below, they found that stresses of the pandemic were related to lower life satisfaction, but that family and social supports have the potential to moderate this effect of stress. Thus, these results point to potential interventions to enhance children’s mental health and well-being as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic.

You can read more about both of these publications in May’s ECHO Connector.