Psychiatric University Hospital of Charité at St. Hedwig-Hospital, Große Hamburger Str. 5-11, 10115, Berlin, Germany.
Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.
Int J Biometeorol. 2018 May;62(5):843-850. doi: 10.1007/s00484-017-1485-z. Epub 2017 Dec 4.
The specific impact of weather factors on psychiatric disorders has been investigated only in few studies with inconsistent results. We hypothesized that meteorological conditions influence the number of cases presenting in a psychiatric emergency room as a measure of mental health conditions. We analyzed the number of patients consulting the emergency room (ER) of a psychiatric hospital in Berlin, Germany, between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2014. A total of N = 22,672 cases were treated in the ER over the study period. Meteorological data were obtained from a publicly available data base. Due to collinearity among the meteorological variables, we performed a principal component (PC) analysis. Association of PCs with the daily number of patients was analyzed with autoregressive integrated moving average model. Delayed effects were investigated using Granger causal modeling. Daily number of patients in the ER was significantly higher in spring and summer compared to fall and winter (p < 0.001). Three PCs explained 76.8% percent of the variance with PC1 loading mostly on temperature, PC2 on cloudiness and low pressure, and PC3 on windiness. PC1 and PC2 showed strong association with number of patients in the emergency room (p < 0.010) indicating higher patient numbers on warmer and on cloudy days. Further, PC1, PC2, and PC3 predicted the number of patients presenting in the emergency room for up to 7 days (p < 0.050). A secondary analysis revealed that the effect of temperature on number of patients was mostly due to lower patient numbers on cold days. Although replication of our findings is required, our results suggest that weather influences the number of psychiatric patients consulting the emergency room. In particular, our data indicate lower patient numbers during very cold temperatures.
气象因素对精神疾病的具体影响仅在少数研究中进行了探讨，结果不一致。我们假设气象条件会影响到精神科急诊室就诊的病例数，以此作为衡量心理健康状况的指标。我们分析了 2008 年 1 月 1 日至 2014 年 12 月 31 日期间德国柏林一家精神病院急诊室就诊的患者数量。在研究期间，共有 22672 例患者在急诊室接受治疗。气象数据来自一个公开可用的数据库。由于气象变量之间存在共线性，我们进行了主成分（PC）分析。使用自回归综合移动平均模型分析了 PC 与每日患者数量的关系。使用格兰杰因果建模研究了滞后效应。急诊室的每日就诊人数在春季和夏季明显高于秋季和冬季（p<0.001）。三个 PC 解释了 76.8%的方差，PC1 主要加载温度，PC2 加载云量和低气压，PC3 加载风速。PC1 和 PC2 与急诊室患者数量呈强关联（p<0.010），表明温暖和多云天气患者数量较多。此外，PC1、PC2 和 PC3 预测了急诊室就诊患者的数量，最长可达 7 天（p<0.050）。一项二次分析显示，温度对患者数量的影响主要是由于寒冷天气下患者数量减少。虽然需要对我们的发现进行复制，但我们的研究结果表明，天气会影响到到急诊室就诊的精神科患者数量。特别是，我们的数据表明，在非常寒冷的天气下，患者数量会减少。
