Covid-19 pandemic and mental health in italy: a multicenter, longitudinal national project

BACKGROUND: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health has been widely documented. In Italy, however, no robust evidence has yet been produced. The objective of this abstract is to describe the profile of the Covid-19 and Mental Health (CoMeH) study cohort and preliminary describe the impact of the pandemic on population mental health. METHODS: Multicenter project promoted and coordinated by National Institute for Health, Migration and Poverty (INMP), involving an open cohort study of incident subjects with mental health disorders, enrolled from 01/01/2018 to 30/06/2022, in 3 centers (ATS Bergamo, Tuscany Region, ASL Roma 2). Subjects aged ≥14 years, residing at least in the previous 2 years, with at least 3 outpatient mental health services, 1 admission to a residential mental health service, 1 hospitalization or emergency room access with psychiatric diagnosis, prescription of at least 2 drugs for mental disorders and exemption for psychiatric disease were included. We estimated the immediate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as pre- and post-Covid-19 trend by fitting a Poisson segmented regression model in the context of the interrupted time series analysis. RESULTS: As of January 2023, the cohort consisted of 242,442 cases (13% in ATS Bergamo, 73% in Tuscany Region and 14% in ASL Roma 2), and mainly had access to prescription drugs (45%, 60%, 62% respectively). Regression model preliminary conducted on ATS Bergamo and ASL Roma 2 showed a decrease in the number of incident cases in the first month of Covid-19 (IRR: 0.793; 95%CI: 0.733-0.857 compared to counterfactual). In the post-Covid-9 period an increasing monthly trend was observed (IRR: 1.013; 95%CI: 1.008-1.019). Findings were similar between women and men. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest evidence of a negative effect of the pandemic on mental health, with an increasing trend in the post-Covid-19 period. Future analysis will be focalized in evaluating socioeconomic inequalities. KEY MESSAGES: • The study aims to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in Italy. • A large longitudinal open cohort will be used to investigate the role of socioeconomic and migrant status.