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Psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the UK COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: COVID-19 has had a profound effect on mental health. Liaison psychiatry teams assess and treat people in mental health crises in emergency departments (EDs) and on hospital wards. During the first pandemic wave, new Mental Health Crisis Assessment Services (MHCAS) were cre...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Asociación Universitaria de Zaragoza para el Progreso de la Psiquiatría y la Salud Mental. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8762608/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35068641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpsy.2021.05.003 |
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author | Sampson, E.L. Wright, J. Dove, J. Mukadam, N. |
author_facet | Sampson, E.L. Wright, J. Dove, J. Mukadam, N. |
author_sort | Sampson, E.L. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: COVID-19 has had a profound effect on mental health. Liaison psychiatry teams assess and treat people in mental health crises in emergency departments (EDs) and on hospital wards. During the first pandemic wave, new Mental Health Crisis Assessment Services (MHCAS) were created to divert people away from EDs. Our objective was to describe patterns in referrals to psychiatric liaison services across the North Central London care sector (NCL) and explore the impact of a new MHCAS. METHODS: Retrospective study using routinely collected data (ED and ward referrals) from five liaison psychiatry services across NCL (total population 1.5 million people). We described referrals (per week and month) by individual liaison services and cross-sector, and patterns of activity (January 1st 2020 -September 31st 2020, weeks 1–39) compared with the same period in 2019. We calculated changes in the proportion of ED attendees (all-cause) referred to liaison psychiatry. RESULTS: From 2019–2020, total referrals decreased by 16.5% (12,265 to 10,247), a 16.4% decrease in ED referrals (9528 to 7965) and 16.6% decrease in ward referrals (2737 to 2282). There was a marked decrease in referrals during the first pandemic wave (March/April 2020), which increased after lockdown ended. The proportion of ED attendees referred to liaison psychiatry services increased compared to 2019. CONCLUSIONS: People in mental health crisis continued to seek help via ED/MHCAS and a higher proportion of people attending ED were referred to liaison psychiatry services just after the first pandemic wave. MHCAS absorbed some sector ED activity during the pandemic. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8762608 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Asociación Universitaria de Zaragoza para el Progreso de la Psiquiatría y la Salud Mental. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87626082022-01-18 Psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the UK COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study Sampson, E.L. Wright, J. Dove, J. Mukadam, N. Eur J Psychiatry Original Article BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: COVID-19 has had a profound effect on mental health. Liaison psychiatry teams assess and treat people in mental health crises in emergency departments (EDs) and on hospital wards. During the first pandemic wave, new Mental Health Crisis Assessment Services (MHCAS) were created to divert people away from EDs. Our objective was to describe patterns in referrals to psychiatric liaison services across the North Central London care sector (NCL) and explore the impact of a new MHCAS. METHODS: Retrospective study using routinely collected data (ED and ward referrals) from five liaison psychiatry services across NCL (total population 1.5 million people). We described referrals (per week and month) by individual liaison services and cross-sector, and patterns of activity (January 1st 2020 -September 31st 2020, weeks 1–39) compared with the same period in 2019. We calculated changes in the proportion of ED attendees (all-cause) referred to liaison psychiatry. RESULTS: From 2019–2020, total referrals decreased by 16.5% (12,265 to 10,247), a 16.4% decrease in ED referrals (9528 to 7965) and 16.6% decrease in ward referrals (2737 to 2282). There was a marked decrease in referrals during the first pandemic wave (March/April 2020), which increased after lockdown ended. The proportion of ED attendees referred to liaison psychiatry services increased compared to 2019. CONCLUSIONS: People in mental health crisis continued to seek help via ED/MHCAS and a higher proportion of people attending ED were referred to liaison psychiatry services just after the first pandemic wave. MHCAS absorbed some sector ED activity during the pandemic. Asociación Universitaria de Zaragoza para el Progreso de la Psiquiatría y la Salud Mental. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. 2022 2021-06-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8762608/ /pubmed/35068641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpsy.2021.05.003 Text en © 2021 Asociación Universitaria de Zaragoza para el Progreso de la Psiquiatría y la Salud Mental. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Original Article Sampson, E.L. Wright, J. Dove, J. Mukadam, N. Psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the UK COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study |
title | Psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the UK COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study |
title_full | Psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the UK COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study |
title_fullStr | Psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the UK COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study |
title_full_unstemmed | Psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the UK COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study |
title_short | Psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the UK COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study |
title_sort | psychiatric liaison service referral patterns during the uk covid-19 pandemic: an observational study |
topic | Original Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8762608/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35068641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpsy.2021.05.003 |
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