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Children^s Mental Health during Pandemic 123 Early Childhood Education Doctor Program, Universitas Negeri Jakarta Abstract The pandemic Covid-19 caused millions of people to die, and lived in fear and stress which led to human mental health problems. This research aims to test the psychometric properties of the Mental Health Inventory (MHI) and describe the pandemic^s effect on children^s mental health in Jakarta, Indonesia. A Checklist of MHI measures for use with children, and to explore whether additional observational children^s behavior items derived from children^s mental health research and theory would strengthen those psychometric properties. The 36 original MHI items were tested for variability, reliability, and validity using an online questionnaire from various social-economic status children^s family backgrounds. Data was taken from 111 children. Results show that the final MHI-C measure included 21 items representing emotional well-being, psychological well-being, and social welfare for children. Emotional well-being is the most affected aspect. The most frequent indicators were that children feel impatient- they find it difficult to be quiet- they quickly feel confused and feel like to be crying. In the aspect of psychological well-being, most often appears item was that children felt that they have control over their behavior, emotions, and feelings. Meanwhile, for the aspect of social welfare, children were quickly disturbed by their surroundings. On the other hand, the rarest indicator is children being easily agitated. From those results, it can be said that during the pandemic, it is important for parents to be able to pay attention due to children^s mental health, especially the children^s emotional well-being which is more directly affected Keywords: Children^s mental health- early childhood- parenting Topic: Early Childhood Education |
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