Since March of late year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been a 24 percent spike nationwide in mental-health-related emergency room visits among children between the ages of 5 and 11, and a 31 percent rise among those between 12 and 17, compared with the same period last year.

While most children should bounce back from isolation and remote learning, childhood development experts said, those growing up amid other adversities like domestic violence, abuse and poverty are struggling to cope with the turmoil of the pandemic — and face greater obstacles in recovering.

“It’s not just the virus that is the problem,” said Alicia Lieberman, director of the Child Trauma Research Program at the University of California, San Francisco, which works annually with about 400 Bay Area children under the age of 6 who have experienced multiple forms of trauma.

Nearly all of the children are Black, Latino or mixed-race, and since the pandemic hit, she said, the program has seen “huge increases” in sleeping problems, nightmares and aggression among the youngsters, as well as bed-wetting among those who had previously grown out of it.

“There’s no question that it’s because they’re already dealing with trauma,” she said, and the virus “becomes one more source of uncontrollable danger.”

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