100 Years apart: Psychiatric admissions during Spanish flu and COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The last pandemic comparable to the current COVID-19 pandemic was the Spanish flu. Using the admission record books for the years 1917 and 1918 and electronic health records for the years 2019 and 2020, we extracted the relevant data and explored how they affected the numbers of emergency psychiatric admissions. The general trend in both pandemics was that they did not cause a rise in psychiatric admissions, findings which go along with reports around Europe. The causes for these similarities are complex but provide an interesting perspective as to why there is no concurrent rise in emergency psychiatric admissions.

Keywords: COVID-19; Emergency admissions; Influenza; Mental health; Psychiatry; SARS-CoV-2; Spanish flu.