Clinical Practice in a Post-COVID Era

Abstract

Experts in many fields with mental health relevance will need to consider the impacts of pandemic-related educational disruptions as they relate to current and future clinical practice. Traditional methods of estimating education and use of pre-pandemic normative datasets are now likely less reliable indicators of cognitive ability. The long-term impact of alteration of developmental trajectories due to school closures is still unknown. Likely underestimates of the actual extent of learning loss may contribute to reduced efficacy of remediation and lost opportunities to mitigate harm. Finally, experts performing forensic and medicolegal evaluations will need to closely attend to the impacts of educational disruption on test administration, score interpretation, differential diagnosis, and alteration of neurodevelopmental trajectories.