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

Psychiatric emergency department visits during the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic

HaiMing Sun #  1 , HaiChun Liu #  2 , ChunYan Ma #  1 , Zheng Chen #  1 , YanYan Wei  1 , XiaoChen Tang  1 , LiHua Xu  1 , YeGang Hu  1 , YuOu Xie  3 , Tao Chen  4   5 , Zheng Lu  6 , JiJun Wang  1   7   8 , TianHong Zhang  1
Affiliations

Psychiatric emergency department visits during the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic

HaiMing Sun et al. Front Psychiatry. .

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The number of monthly psychiatric emergency department visits across 2018, 2019, and 2020.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The number of psychiatric emergency department visits stratified by various diagnostic categories, 2018–2020. Diagnostic categories: AD, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias; ID, intellectual disability; TIC, Tic disorder; Epilepsy; Delirium; SARD, Substance abuse and related disorders; PDRD, Physical diseases and related disorders; State, Excitement state account for the majority; Psychosis; Mood-D, Mood disorders; Stress-D, Stress-related disorders; Sleep-D, Sleep disorders; Dissociative-D, Dissociative Disorders; Anxiety-D, Anxiety Disorders; OCD, Obsessive-compulsive disorder; TBD, To be determined.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The annual proportion of patients who visit PED in each diagnostic category. Diagnostic categories: AD, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias; ID, intellectual disability; TIC, Tic disorder; Epilepsy; Delirium; SARD, Substance abuse and related disorders; PDRD, Physical diseases and related disorders; State, Excitement state account for the majority; Psychosis; Mood-D, Mood disorders; Stress-D, Stress-related disorders; Sleep-D, Sleep disorders; Dissociative-D, Dissociative disorders; Anxiety-D, Anxiety disorders; OCD, Obsessive-compulsive disorder; TBD, To be determined.
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