Abstract
BackgroundThe COVID-19-pandemic and especially the physical distancing measures drastically changed the conditions for providing outpatient care in adolescent psychiatry.MethodsWe investigated the outpatient services of adolescent psychiatry in the Helsinki University Hospital (HUH) from 1/1/2015 until 12/31/2020. We retrieved data from the in-house data software on the number of visits in total and categorized as in-person or remote visits, and analysed the data on a weekly basis. We further analysed these variables grouped according to the psychiatric diagnoses coded for visits. Data on the number of patients and on referrals from other health care providers were available on a monthly basis. We investigated the data descriptively and with a time-series analysis comparing the pre-pandemic period to the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsThe total number of visits decreased slightly at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020. Remote visits sharply increased starting in 3/2020 and remained at a high level compared with previous years. In-person visits decreased in Spring 2020, but gradually increased afterwards. The number of patients transiently fell in Spring 2020.ConclusionsRapid switch to remote visits in outpatient care of adolescent psychiatry made it possible to avoid a drastic drop in the number of visits despite the physical distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
The COVID-19-pandemic and especially the physical distancing measures drastically changed the conditions for providing outpatient care in adolescent psychiatry
Remote visits sharply increased starting in 3/2020, and after 5/2020, a significant decrease in slope was observed; after Summer 2020 remote visits were at a lower level than in Spring, but still at a higher level than predicted based on pre-pandemic data (Fig. 1c)
Both modes of remote visits decreased after Spring 2020, but remained at a much higher level than in previous years (Online Resource, Fig. S1b)
Summary
The COVID-19-pandemic and especially the physical distancing measures drastically changed the conditions for providing outpatient care in adolescent psychiatry. Numerous studies based on self-assessment surveys have reported signs of poor mental health in adult general populations during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic [3, 4]. Studies on mental health of children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic are far fewer than on adult populations, they have reported nuanced observations. Two studies from the USA observed that mental health symptoms in adolescents increased in Spring 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic and subsided towards the Summer, when the pandemic and ensuing restrictions eased [7, 8]. In a Canadian study on both community and psychiatric clinical populations, the majority (70%) of parents reported in 4–6/2020 that the mental health of their 6–18 year old child had deteriorated with stress related to social isolation, whereas 20% of parents reported improvement in their child’s mental health [9]
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