The impact of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on emergency psychiatry department admissions

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and lockdown period measures on patients’ visits to the psychiatric emergency department (PED) of a University Hospital in İstanbul. We compared the number and characteristics of patients during the initial lockdown with visits in the pre- and post-lockdown months. We also investigated the number of monthly PED visits and hospitalizations between March 11, 2020 and 2021 and compared it to the same period in 2019 and between March 2021 and 2022. PED visits in the initial lockdown period in our university increased by 109% compared to the prelockdown months in the previous year. Anxiety and depressive disorders were responsible for most of this increase. The decline in PED visits was 3.1% and 42% during the first and second year of the pandemic, respectively; however, among the major diagnostic categories, we found that the rates of anxiety, depressive disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder increased significantly in the first year, while psychotic disorders declined and bipolar disorders remained the same. In the second year, there was a trend toward prepandemic year ratios. These findings show that the pandemic affects PED admissions in different ways at different periods. These data may also help shaping the public policies necessary to meet the evolving needs in the field of mental health of society at different public crises in the future.