The Mental Health Toll of Keeping Schools Closed

As a pediatrician, I have the privilege of hearing from parents and the responsibility to help them. Lately, I have heard heart-wrenching stories of suffering: from the dad whose 14-year-old daughter is sobbing in her bathroom three times a week, depressed from being isolated, to the mom whose son is failing every subject in eighth grade online school, to the family whose daughter overdosed for the second time this pandemic due to thoughts of suicide.