Emergency department utilization for mental health conditions before and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

The outbreak of COVID-19 disrupted lives across the United States. Evidence shows that such a climate is deleterious to mental health and may increase demand for mental health services in emergency departments. The purpose of this study was to determine the difference in emergency department utilization for mental health diagnoses before and after the COVID-19 surge.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional study between January-August 2019 and January-August 2020 with emergency department encounter as the sampling unit. The primary outcome was the proportion of all emergency department encounters attributed to mental health. We performed chi-square analyses to evaluate the differences between 2019 and 2020.

Results

We found that overall emergency departmen

SUBMITTER: Stroever S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8010358 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature