Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on psychiatric clinical trials

OBJECTIVE: COVID-19 and associated measures to control the spread of the COVID-19 has significantly impacted clinical research. This study aimed to determine the impact COVID-19 has had on psychiatric clinical trials and to assess whether certain trial areas or trial types were differentially affected. METHODS: We used information from ClinicalTrials.gov, the largest online database of clinical trial information, to examine changes in psychiatric clinical trials from January 2010–December 2020. RESULTS: Clinical trial initiation decreased in 2020, with a year-on-year percent change in trial initiation of −5.4% versus an expected percent change based on forecasting observed trends from 2010 to 2019 of 8.6%. When broken down by disease area, the distribution of trials observed in 2020 was significantly different from the predicted distribution (p < 0.00001). The greatest decrease in trial initiation was seen in Schizophrenia-specific trials, with an observed percent change of −29.2% versus an expected percent change of 3.2%. Conversely, anxiety trials saw a significant increase in trial initiation during 2020, with an observed percent change of 24.6% versus an expected percent change of 16.0%. When assessing interventional versus observational studies, data showed a significant increase in initiation of observational psychiatric clinical trials (p < 0.05), and a significant decrease in initiation of interventional psychiatric clinical trials (p < 0.01). When data was analyzed on a month-by-month time scale, 7/12 months in 2020 showed significant decreases when compared to initiation during matching months over prior years, and a single month, June, showed a significant increase. CONCLUSION: COVID-19 has had significant impacts on the initiation of psychiatric clinical trials over 2020, and this decrease in trial initiation may have long-term impacts on the development and assessment of psychiatric treatments and therapeutics.