Psychiatric ED visits declined among youths during first year of pandemic
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Among children and adolescents in Israel, use of psychiatric emergency departments declined sharply during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to the year prior, according to a study in BMC Psychiatry.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has ben a major stressor for the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents, resulting in an accumulation of worldwide reports regarding the severe and multifaceted consequences on the mental health of this cohort,” Galit Erez, of the Shalvata Mental Health Center and Tel Aviv University in Israel, and colleagues wrote.
Erez and colleagues sought to evaluate clinically relevant acute mental states among children and adolescents admitted to different medical centers during the pandemic.
Their study featured data culled from two psychiatric hospital EDs and one general hospital located within Israel, with a combined reach of 2.3 million people. A total of 3,224 patients aged 12 to 18 years, who received a psychiatric diagnosis according to ICD-19 criteria, were included.
All visits of individuals within the study age range pulled from the computerized files between March and December 2019, were analyzed anonymously and compared with the same months in 2020 using multilevel linear modeling.
Results showed that the rate of total pediatric acute psychiatric ED visits decreased significantly between 2019 and 2020, from a mean of 57.83 ± 26.23 monthly visits to 49.63 ± 20.40 monthly visits.
The prevalence and proportion of stress-related, anxiety and mood disorders decreased significantly from 2019 (27.9% ± 16.8% of all visits) to 2020 (22.3 ± 14.0%, B [168] =-0.06, 95% CI=-0.10, -0.01). The prevalence of severe psychiatric disorders did not change significantly; the proportion of these disorders from overall referrals increased significantly across centers (from 45.4% ± 12.4% in 2019, to 47.2 ± 13.5% in 2020), B (168) = 0.07, 95% CI = 0.01, 0.14), but was inconsistent between centers. Conversely, researchers found that prevalence of visits that resulted in patient hospitalization did not change significantly between 2019 (27.9% ± 9.6%) and 2020 (26.5% ± 10.4%).
“We consider the results of this study to be a call for further developments in the study and incorporation of emergency tele-psychiatry for children and adolescents,” Erez and colleagues wrote.