Fig. 2

Observation period for the pandemic cohort and pre-pandemic cohort across outcomes. We compared the percentage with a mental health consultation/prescription between the pandemic and pre-pandemic students each relative month, to ensure comparison between same-aged students. The start of the pandemic, March 2020, is set as relative month 0. Relative months -14 to -1 constituted the pre-treatment period and relative months 0 to 23 constituted the treatment period. In relative months that overlapped between the two cohorts that constituted the pre-pandemic cohort (shaded area), we calculated the average outcome value for descriptive statistics. Due to data availability, prescription drugs could only be observed between relative months -5 and 11