MONDAY, April 15, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Pediatric mental health (MH) emergency department visits were lower during the late pandemic period than prepandemic, according to a study published online April 2 in Academic Emergency Medicine.

In a retrospective study, Jennifer A. Hoffmann, M.D., from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and colleagues examined how pediatric MH emergency department visits during the COVID-19 pandemic differed from expected prepandemic trends. Children aged 5 to <18 years at nine U.S. hospitals were included from 2017 to 2022. Visit length was described by time period: prepandemic, early pandemic, midpandemic, and late pandemic (January 2017 to February 2020; March 2020 to December 2020; 2021; and 2022, respectively). Rate ratios (RRs) of observed to expected visits per 30 days during each pandemic time period were calculated.

A total of 175,979 pediatric MH emergency department visits were identified. For 7.3, 8.4, 15.0, and 19.2 percent of prepandemic, early pandemic, midpandemic, and late pandemic visits, respectively, visit length exceeded 12 hours. The researchers found that compared with expected rates, observed visits per 30 days decreased during the early pandemic (RR, 0.80; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.78 to 0.84), were similar during the midpandemic (RR, 1.01; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.96 to 1.07), then decreased during the late pandemic (RR, 0.92; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.86 to 0.98). Visits were higher than expected for females and for bipolar disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and substance-related and addictive disorders.

“Our results have relevance to policy considerations and the development of tailored interventions to improve youth mental health,” the authors write.

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