Premature mortality in early-intervention mental health services: a data linkage study protocol to examine mortality and morbidity outcomes in a cohort of help-seeking young people

Catherine McHugh; Yun Ju Christine Song; Natalia Zmicerevska; Jacob Crouse; Alissa Nichles; Chloe Wilson; Nicholas Ho; Frank Iorfino; Adam Skinner; Elizabeth M Scott; Ian B Hickie

doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-054264

Premature mortality in early-intervention mental health services: a data linkage study protocol to examine mortality and morbidity outcomes in a cohort of help-seeking young people

BMJ Open. 2022 Feb 21;12(2):e054264. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-054264.

Affiliations

¹ Brain and Mind Centre, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia catherine.mchugh@sydney.edu.au.
² Brain and Mind Centre, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
³ The Sax Institute, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Abstract

Introduction: Understanding the risk of premature death from suicide, accident and injury and other physical health conditions in people seeking healthcare for mental disorders is essential for delivering targeted clinical interventions and secondary prevention strategies. It is not clear whether morbidity and mortality outcomes in hospital-based adult cohorts are applicable to young people presenting to early-intervention services.

Methods and analysis: The current data linkage project will establish the Brain and Mind Patient Research Register-Mortality and Morbidity (BPRR-M&M) database. The existing Brain and Mind Research Institute Patient Research Register (BPRR) is a cohort of 6743 young people who have accessed primary care-based early-intervention services; subsets of the BPRR contain rich longitudinal clinical, neurobiological, social and functional data. The BPRR will be linked with the routinely collected health data from emergency department (ED), hospital admission and mortality databases in New South Wales from January 2010 to November 2020. Mortality will be the primary outcome of interest, while hospital presentations will be a secondary outcome. The established BPRR-M&M database will be used to establish mortality rates and rates of ED presentations and hospital admissions. Survival analysis will determine how time to death or hospital presentation varies by identified social, demographic and clinical variables. Bayesian modelling will be used to identify predictors of these morbidity and mortality outcomes.

Ethics and dissemination: The study has been reviewed and approved by the human research ethics committee of the Sydney Local Health District (2019/ETH00469). All data will be non-identifiable, and research findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journals and scientific conference presentations.

Keywords: adult psychiatry; child & adolescent psychiatry; mental health; public health; suicide & self-harm.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Bayes Theorem
Humans
Information Storage and Retrieval
Mental Health Services*
Morbidity
Mortality, Premature*