[KIRKLAND] – (MTN) The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study investigating the potential changes in the number of ER visits for mental health, suicide attempts, overdose, and violence outcomes change during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authored by Kristin M. Holland, PhD, MPH, Division of Overdose Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the study compared date from December 2018 to October 2020.
During lockdowns and social distancing mandates, ER visits changed in a telling way.
- After the “15 days to slow the spread” COVID-19
mitigation program rolled out on March 16, 2020, ER visits for all reasons
decreased, but a surveillance program for certain conditions noticed that that
not all conditions saw the same changes.
- Mental health conditions, drug overdoses in
general, opioid overdoses specifically, suicide attempts, suspected child abuse
and neglect, and intimate partner violence were all tracked in the surveillance
beginning at the end of December, 2018.
- Visits for mental health conditions and
overdoses had significantly increasing trends prior to the pandemic and,
despite mild decreases with the initial mitigation efforts, continued these
trends into the pandemic.
- Despite a falloff of all ER visits, the
conditions studied only had much smaller decreases and rebounded to trends
faster than other causes of ER visits.
- The results are not conclusive, but they do
suggest that there is a greater burden of overdose occurring. The researchers
point out that not all patients experiencing the conditions studied present to
the ER for care even without a pandemic and the study underestimates the real
number of Americans who experience these conditions.
The study
looking at ER visits for specific conditions as compared to total ER visits on
a week by week basis began on December 30, 2018 and concluded on October 10,
2020. It drives home the point that the coronavirus pandemic combined with the
mitigation strategies and resultant social isolation and economic stress has a
cumulative impact on mental health conditions, suicide attempts, drug overdoses
and violence events. Even though there is a correlation between the pandemic
and increased presentation of the studied group compared to other diagnoses,
mental health conditions, suicide attempts, and overdoses were all trending
upward throughout 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conditions that
likely contributed to the fall in overall ER visits during the pandemic are
certain to include stay-at-home orders and apprehension about exposure to
COVID-19 in health care settings. The studied conditions may not have seen the
more dramatic decrease in ER presentation initially because patients’ regular
care providers would have been closed while they implemented strategies to
decrease transmission risks and focused mainly on COVID-19 specifically.
Further into the pandemic, many may have lost their employer-provided health
insurance limiting their options for treatment to emergency rooms.
Regardless of
the cause for relative increases in mental health, suicide attempts, overdoses,
and violence, the fact is that many patients suffering with these conditions do
not present for professional health care even outside of the pandemic
conditions. This study does not pretend to illuminate the number of patients
who did not seek such care, but it does highlight the need for heightened
attention to prevention and treatment of these conditions; for individuals presenting
to the ER, introducing appropriate measures (e.g., counseling on safe storage
of lethal means of suicide, making sure that naloxone is available, starting
buprenorphine therapy, and screening for intimate partner violence), directly
involving patients with in-person or virtual behavioral health and social
support services, and providing effective treatment for opioid use disorders
can provide immediate assistance for those in crisis. The authors also identify
the need for broader societal- and community-level prevention efforts in
addressing the growing instances of mental health conditions, suicide attempts,
drug overdose, opioid overdose, and domestic violence.