Emergency department mental health presentations before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia

OBJECTIVE: Coronavirus (COVID-19) has led to high levels of psychological distress in the community. This study aimed to examine whether emergency departments (EDs) also recorded a rise in mental health presentations. METHOD: Changes in the number, and type, of mental health presentations to Western...

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Autores principales: Dragovic, Milan, Pascu, Viki, Hall, Tammy, Ingram, Jesse, Waters, Flavie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2020
Materias:
COVID-19 Pandemic
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7509241/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32961096
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1039856220960673
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author Dragovic, Milan
Pascu, Viki
Hall, Tammy
Ingram, Jesse
Waters, Flavie
author_facet Dragovic, Milan
Pascu, Viki
Hall, Tammy
Ingram, Jesse
Waters, Flavie
author_sort Dragovic, Milan
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: Coronavirus (COVID-19) has led to high levels of psychological distress in the community. This study aimed to examine whether emergency departments (EDs) also recorded a rise in mental health presentations. METHOD: Changes in the number, and type, of mental health presentations to Western Australia EDs were examined between January and May 2020, and compared to 2019. RESULTS: Data showed an unexpected decrease in the number of mental health presentations, compared to 2019, which was temporally coincident with the rise in local COVID-19 cases. Presentations for anxiety and panic symptoms, and social and behavioural issues, increased by 11.1% and 6.5%, respectively, but suicidal and self-harm behaviours decreased by 26%. CONCLUSION: A rise in local COVID-19 cases was associated with a decrease in mental health presentations to EDs. This has important implications for the planning and provision of healthcare services in the current pandemic.
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spelling pubmed-75092412020-09-23 Emergency department mental health presentations before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia Dragovic, Milan Pascu, Viki Hall, Tammy Ingram, Jesse Waters, Flavie Australas Psychiatry COVID-19 Pandemic OBJECTIVE: Coronavirus (COVID-19) has led to high levels of psychological distress in the community. This study aimed to examine whether emergency departments (EDs) also recorded a rise in mental health presentations. METHOD: Changes in the number, and type, of mental health presentations to Western Australia EDs were examined between January and May 2020, and compared to 2019. RESULTS: Data showed an unexpected decrease in the number of mental health presentations, compared to 2019, which was temporally coincident with the rise in local COVID-19 cases. Presentations for anxiety and panic symptoms, and social and behavioural issues, increased by 11.1% and 6.5%, respectively, but suicidal and self-harm behaviours decreased by 26%. CONCLUSION: A rise in local COVID-19 cases was associated with a decrease in mental health presentations to EDs. This has important implications for the planning and provision of healthcare services in the current pandemic. SAGE Publications 2020-09-22 2020-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7509241/ /pubmed/32961096 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1039856220960673 Text en © The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle COVID-19 Pandemic
Dragovic, Milan
Pascu, Viki
Hall, Tammy
Ingram, Jesse
Waters, Flavie
Emergency department mental health presentations before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia
title Emergency department mental health presentations before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia
title_full Emergency department mental health presentations before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia
title_fullStr Emergency department mental health presentations before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia
title_full_unstemmed Emergency department mental health presentations before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia
title_short Emergency department mental health presentations before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia
title_sort emergency department mental health presentations before and during the covid-19 outbreak in western australia
topic COVID-19 Pandemic
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7509241/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32961096
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1039856220960673
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