Psychiatric emergency department visits during the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic

HaiMing Sun; HaiChun Liu; ChunYan Ma; Zheng Chen; YanYan Wei; XiaoChen Tang; LiHua Xu; YeGang Hu; YuOu Xie; Tao Chen; Zheng Lu; JiJun Wang; TianHong Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1236584

Psychiatric emergency department visits during the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic

Front Psychiatry. 2023 Aug 28:14:1236584. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1236584. eCollection 2023.

Authors

HaiMing Sun^#¹, HaiChun Liu^#², ChunYan Ma^#¹, Zheng Chen^#¹, YanYan Wei¹, XiaoChen Tang¹, LiHua Xu¹, YeGang Hu¹, YuOu Xie³, Tao Chen^{4

5}, Zheng Lu⁶, JiJun Wang^{1

7

8}, TianHong Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Psychological Evaluation and Intervention, Shanghai, China.
² Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
³ The First Clinical Medical College of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
⁴ Big Data Research Lab, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
⁵ Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.
⁶ Department of Psychiatry, Tongji Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
⁷ Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT), Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai, China.
⁸ Institute of Psychology and Behavioral Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Previous research has demonstrated the negative impact of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on mental health.

Aims: To examine changes in the Chinese psychiatric emergency department (PED) visits for mental health crises that occurred during the pandemic.

Methods: Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, PED visit counts from the largest psychiatric hospital in China between 2018 and 2020 were investigated. Electronic medical records of 2020 PED visits were extracted during the COVID-19 pandemic period and compared for the same period of 2018 and 2019.

Results: Overall, PED visits per year increased from 1,767 in 2018 to 2210 (an increase of 25.1%) in 2019 and 2,648 (an increase of 49.9%) in 2020. Compared with 2 years before the epidemic, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the proportion of PED visits among patients with stress disorders, sleep disorders, and anxiety disorders increased significantly. In terms of the distribution of demographic characteristics, age shows a younger trend, while the gender difference is not significant.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that PED care-seeking increases during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the need to integrate mental health services for patients with stress, sleep, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorders during public health crises.

Keywords: anxiety disorder; emergency psychiatry; psychiatric hospital; sleep disorder; stress.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82171544, 81971251, 82101582, 82001406, and 81871050) and the Clinical Research Plan of SHDC (SHDC2022CRD026 and SHDC2020CR4066).