The impact of COVID-19 on the psychiatric emergency departments of two Italian hospitals in Milan

Rita Cafaro; Eleonora Piccoli; Luca Ferrara; Stefania Russo; Filippo Dragogna; Caterina Viganò; Claudio Mencacci; Bernardo Dell'Osso

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114303

The impact of COVID-19 on the psychiatric emergency departments of two Italian hospitals in Milan

Psychiatry Res. 2022 Jan:307:114303. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114303. Epub 2021 Nov 28.

Authors

Rita Cafaro¹, Eleonora Piccoli², Luca Ferrara², Stefania Russo³, Filippo Dragogna³, Caterina Viganò², Claudio Mencacci³, Bernardo Dell'Osso⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences Luigi Sacco, University of Milan, Milan, Italy. Electronic address: rita.cafaro@unimi.it.
² Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences Luigi Sacco, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.
³ Department of Neuroscience, ASST Fatebenefratelli Sacco, Milan, Italy.
⁴ Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences Luigi Sacco, University of Milan, Milan, Italy; CRC Aldo Ravelli, University of Milan, Milan, Italy; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Stanford University, CA, USA.

Abstract

During the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 contagion in Italy, mental health care services continuity has been granted to the general population. Emergent and urgent conditions, however, are managed in collaboration with Emergency Departments (EDs). This collaboration may have suffered from the overload of the EDs due to the high number of SARS-CoV-2 positive patients. In this perspective, we analysed the possible impact of COVID-19 on the EDs accesses of psychiatric patients in two of the main hospitals of Milan, the "Luigi Sacco" Hospital and the "Fatebenefratelli" Hospital, comparing their admissions between the periods of March, April and May 2019 and 2020. We found a significant reduction in the number of evaluated patients in 2020 in both EDs. Emergency Medical Services (EMSs) brought a significant lower number of patients to the ED of Sacco Hospital during 2020, while this number increased for the ED of Fatebenefratelli Hospital, confirming the hypothesis that the overload of the Sacco Hospital ED significantly influenced the possibility to receive a psychiatric evaluation there. Moreover, we found a significant difference between diagnosis at discharge of the different samples.

Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic; Emergency departments; Emergency psychiatry; Psychiatric care.

Publication types

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

MeSH terms

COVID-19*
Emergency Service, Hospital
Hospitals
Humans
Patient Discharge
SARS-CoV-2