Mr. Ferro, along with colleague Alène Toulany from SickKids and the University of Toronto, recently published a paper titled “Longitudinal association between youth multimorbidity and psychological distress: impact of the COVID-19 pandemic” in the journal Child Psychiatry and Human Development.

The paper, sampling from 147 parent-youth dyads participating in the larger MY LIFE study, examined longitudinal associations between youth physical-mental multimorbidity and psychological distress before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also assessed the contextual impact of the pandemic on these associations and investigated potential moderating factors.

The following findings were highlighted:

• Multimorbidity was associated with higher pre-pandemic, but not with intra-pandemic distress
• Disability moderated pre-pandemic distress, meaning multimorbidity was associated with higher psychological distress among youth with high disability, but not among youth with low disability
• Age moderated intra-pandemic distress, specifically multimorbidity was associated with higher psychological distress in older youth, but not among younger youth