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Mental health disorder ED visits increased from 2008 to 2010

Patients with mental health disorders visit the ED for injuries and illnesses complicated by or related to their mental health disorder or when psychiatric or primary care providers are unavailable, according to findings in a recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The Carolina Center for Health Informatics analyzed ED visits from 2008 to 2010 that were captured by the North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT).

“This report describes the results of that analysis, which indicated that nearly 10% of ED visits had one or more [mental health disorder diagnostic codes] assigned to the visit and the rate of [mental health disorder diagnostic code]-related ED visits increased seven times as much as the overall rate of ED visits in North Carolina during the study period,” researchers wrote.

Researchers found that, from 2008 to 2010, the annual number of ED visits in North Carolina increased 5.1% and mental health disorder diagnostic code-related ED visits increased by 17.7%. Mental health disorder diagnostic code ED visits accounted for 9.3% of all ED visits in 2010 and 31.1% of ED visits related to mental health disorders resulted in hospital admission compared with 14.1% of all ED visits.

Patients aged at least 65 years with mental health diagnostic code-related ED visits were nearly twice that of those aged 25 to 64 years.

“The highest admission proportion was for ED visits associated with dementia (60.5%),” researchers wrote. “Population-based rates of [mental health diagnostic code]-related visits for those aged ≥65 years were very high for any [mental health diagnosis] compared with all other age groups, driven primarily by higher rates of schizophrenia/delusions/psychoses, dementia, and stress/anxiety/depression.”

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.