Abstract
The global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had wide-ranging effects on the mental health of the public. This study aimed to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the characteristics of psychiatric patients who visited emergency departments (ED) during this time. A cross-sectional study was conducted including patients visiting 402 nationwide EDs from 27 January 2020 to 29 June 2020 (22 weeks; during-COVID) and the corresponding period in 2019 (28 January 2019 to 30 June 2019, 22 weeks; before-COVID) to control for seasonal influences. Among the 6,210,613 patients who visited the ED, 88,520 (2.5%) patients who visited before the pandemic and 73,281 (2.7%) patients who visited during the pandemic had some kind of psychiatric illness. The incidence rates of psychiatric self-harm increased from 0.54 before the pandemic to 0.56 during the pandemic per 1,000,000 person-days (p = 0.04). Age- and sex-standardized rates of psychiatric illnesses per 100,000 ED visits increased during the pandemic (rate differences (95% CIs); 45.7 (20.1–71.4) for all psychiatric disorders and 42.2 (36.2–48.3) for psychiatric self-harm). The incidence of psychiatric self-harm and the proportion of psychiatric patients visiting EDs increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
The global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a huge impact on peoples’ daily lives [1]
This study aimed to investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the trends and characteristics of patients with psychiatric illnesses who visited emergency department (ED) using a nationwide database
88,520 (2.5%) patients in the before-COVID period and 73,281 (2.7%) patients in the during-COVID period had a diagnosis of psychiatric illness, and 4240 (0.12%) patients in the before-COVID period and 4431 (0.17%) patients in the during-COVID period had visited the ED for injuries caused by self-harm with a diagnosis of psychiatric illness
Summary
The global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a huge impact on peoples’ daily lives [1]. Several countries implemented nationwide lockdowns and issued social distancing guidelines to reduce person-to-person contact and prevent the spread of the virus [2]. This has led to a reduction in the frequency of social activities and changes in the pattern of use of healthcare services. As the number of people in quarantine have increased during the pandemic, isolated people tend to experienced various negative psychological effects from quarantine, including posttraumatic stress disorder, confusion, and anger [11]. The pandemic has adversely affected the mental health of everyone who has lived through it, by making people feel anxious, depressed, and stressed [8,16]
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