Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental and Behavioral Health Visits to the Emergency Department (original) (raw)

Objectives: This study aimed to describe changes in pediatric emergency department (ED) mental and behavioral health (MBH) visits before and during the early COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed medical records of patients aged from 5 to 17 years presenting to the pediatric ED of a major tertiary care hospital with MBH-related concerns from March 2017 to September 2020. We evaluated trends in MBH ED visits over the study period, specifically comparing patient demographics, diagnosis categories, and ED disposition between the pre-COVID (2019) and COVID (2020) periods using pairwise Pearson χ 2 analyses with reported odds ratios (ORs) in SAS statistical software version 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc, Cary, NC). Results: Of 8093 MBH-related visits, 58.5% were females, 85.4% were adolescents, and 62.7% self-identified as non-Hispanic. The proportion of MBH-related ED visits increased from 3.8% to 7.5% over the study period (P < 0.0001). Although total MBH visits decreased by 17.3% from 2019 to 2020, there was a proportionate increase in MBH-to-total-ED visits, representing a 42.8% increase through 2019. Compared with 2019, there was a proportionate increase in MBH-related ED visits by females (10.6%,

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