Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adult mental health-related admissions at a large university health system in North Carolina - one year into the pandemic.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Pandemic-associated stress may have exacerbated preexisting mental health and substance use disorders (MH/SUD) and caused new MH/SUD diagnoses which would be expected to lead to an increase in visits to emergency departments and hospital admissions for these conditions. This study assessed whether the proportion of hospital and emergency department encounters for MH/SUD diagnoses increased during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

Methods

We conducted a longitudinal (interrupted time series) analysis of 994,724 eligible encounters identified by electronic query between January 1, 2016 and March 31, 2021. Of these, 55,574 encounters involved MH/SUD diagnosis. The pre-pandemic period was defined as January 1, 2016 to March 31, 2020, and the

SUBMITTER: Der T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10734981 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature