difficulties of families with children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders during the covid-19 outbreak: a cross-sectional study

Background: the covid-19 crisis has confronted parents with significant challenges in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry that must be addressed. objectives: the current study aimed to evaluate the burden of the pandemic on families with children and adolescents diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. methods: this descriptive study used a cross-sectional design. a total of 92 children and adolescents (age range: 2 - 18 years; mean age: 9.49 ± 4.72) diagnosed with psychiatric disorders participated in the study. the parents (father or mother) of the children were asked to complete an informed consent form, a questionnaire to obtain demographic data, and a questionnaire to gather information about the difficulties parents faced with their children and adolescents during the covid-19 pandemic. data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-squared tests, and fisher's exact test. results: the most common challenges parents faced included sleep problems (disruption of the sleep-wake cycle; 58.7%), excessive use of media (54.3%), and significant challenges with elearning (53.33%). inactivity (41.3%), difficulty accessing a psychiatrist (32.6%), difficulty accessing other therapists (23.9%), and worsening symptoms (23.9%) were the next most prevalent issues. the results also showed that 80.8% of parents of children with sleep-wake cycle disruptions, 83.5% of parents of children with excessive social media use, and 79.3% of parents of children with educational problems reported conflict with their children; the intensity of the conflict was moderate in most cases. a history of psychiatric disorders in parents did not predict parent-child conflict over the children’s problems during the quarantine (all p > 0.05). conclusions: attention to the impact of the pandemic on these patients should guide the care provided by clinicians.