Abstract
ObjectiveLiterature on temporal patterns of suicidality among youths during the COVID-19 pandemic is growing. The present work proposes a Bayesian approach to assess temporal patterns of suicide-related behaviours among inpatient adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. MethodologyData referred to the first hospital discharge record with ICD9-CM codes related to suicide-related behaviour and/or suicidal ideation among adolescents aged 13–19 between 1 January 2017 and 31 March 2021 were collected in the Piedmont region, Italy (n = 334; median age: 15 years, IQR: 14–16; 80% girls). A Poisson Bayesian regression model performed on pre-COVID-19 data (2017–2020), adjusted by seasonality and stratified by sex, was adopted to provide the probability that the predicted counts exceed the observed ones in each pandemic year quarter. ResultsA declining trend of suicidality was observed in April–June 2020 among both sex groups. Among females, an increasing pattern of suicidality was registered in early 2021 (January–March) compared to the pre-pandemic period. ConclusionThe present findings contributed to a growing literature on the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on adolescents' suicide-related behaviours from a gender perspective and encouraged wider adoption of Bayesian approaches as valuable tools to explore rare events and deeply enlighten open public health issues.
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