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. 2021 Dec;15(6):1799-1802.
doi: 10.1111/eip.13113. Epub 2021 Jan 11.

Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health outcomes in a cohort of early psychosis patients

Alejandro G Szmulewicz  1 , Nicole M Benson  2   3 , John Hsu  4   5 , Miguel A Hernán  1   6 , Dost Öngür  7   8
Affiliations

Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health outcomes in a cohort of early psychosis patients

Alejandro G Szmulewicz et al. Early Interv Psychiatry. 2021 Dec.

Abstract

Aim: To evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical outcomes, we used data from Electronic Health Records from 128 patients receiving care at a First Episode Psychosis clinic.

Methods: Rates of admission or emergency room (ER) visits from January 2020 to July 2020 were analysed using difference-in-difference regression. We used the same weeks in 2019 to control for seasonality.

Results: We found 17 hospitalizations or ER visits between 1 January 2020 and 13 March 2020 (incidence rate: 71.4 events/1000 person-weeks) and 6 between 14 March 2020 and 20 June 2020 (incidence rate: 18.5 events/1000 person-weeks) for an incidence rate ratio of 0.26. The severity of presentation worsened after transition to telemedicine. No signs of significant interruptions of care were found.

Conclusions: We report that patients have avoided accessing higher levels of care, except in extreme cases. We argue that this is not a sustainable trajectory and that public health actions are required.

Keywords: coronavirus 19; employment; hospitalizations; schizophrenia; substance abuse.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Trajectories of symptomatic scores (a), employment status (b), marijuana use (c), and hospitalization and ER visits (d) before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020 and during the same period in 2019
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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