Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Incidence and Characteristics of Patients with Psychiatric Illnesses Visiting Emergency Departments in Koreaopen access
- Authors
- Lee, Sun Young; Ro, Young Sun; Jeong, Joo; Shin, Sang Do; Moon, Sungwoo
- Issue Date
- 2월-2022
- Publisher
- MDPI
- Keywords
- COVID-19; mental health; suicide; emergency
- Citation
- JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE, v.11, no.3
- Indexed
- SCIE
SCOPUS
- Journal Title
- JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
- Volume
- 11
- Number
- 3
- URI
- https://scholar.korea.ac.kr/handle/2021.sw.korea/140852
- DOI
- 10.3390/jcm11030488
- ISSN
- 2077-0383
- 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.
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