Kirič Barbara, Leben Novak Lara, Lušicky Petra, Drobnič Radobuljac Maja
Center for Mental Health, University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Front Psychiatry. 2022 May 11;13:893040. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.893040. eCollection 2022.
Slovenia is among the countries with the highest suicide rates in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the mental health of children and adolescents. Our hypothesis is that the school closure during the pandemic with a gradual transfer to virtual schooling had an important impact on children's and adolescents' suicidal behavior. Therefore, we aimed to determine possible changes in the frequency of assessments as well as frequency and severity of suicidal behavior in the population of Slovene children and adolescents seeking emergency psychiatric help in correlation with the progression of the pandemic and online schooling.
We performed a retrospective observational analysis of medical records of all children and adolescents referred to the only 24-h emergency in- and outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry service in Slovenia from March 2019 through the end of July 2021. We extracted number of assessments, number of patients with suicidal ideation and with attempted suicide. A comparison between the same periods prior to the pandemic and during the pandemic was made. The months of school closure due to the COVID-19 restriction measures and the months without closures were also compared.
During this period, 1966 children and adolescents were assessed. There was no statistically significant difference in the observed frequency of emergency visits when we compared all the months with to all the months without school closures, or when individual corresponding months with and without school closures were compared. However, there were statistically significantly more patients with suicidal ideation [(16) = -2.739, = 0.015; W = 25.0, = 0.016] and patients who had attempted suicide [(16)= -3.412, = 0.004; W = 14.5, =0.006] during the pandemic as individually compared to the corresponding pre-pandemic months.
Our results show that the number of Slovene children and adolescents who required emergency psychiatric help with suicidality and attempted suicide increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase was shown only after the first year of the pandemic. The observed increase did not appear to directly correspond to the school closures, but was more likely related to the duration of the pandemic.
斯洛文尼亚是世界上自杀率最高的国家之一。新冠疫情对儿童和青少年的心理健康产生了重大影响。我们的假设是，疫情期间学校关闭并逐渐转向虚拟教学对儿童和青少年的自杀行为产生了重要影响。因此，我们旨在确定在斯洛文尼亚寻求紧急心理治疗帮助的儿童和青少年群体中，评估频率以及自杀行为的频率和严重程度与疫情进展和在线教学相关的可能变化。
我们对2019年3月至2021年7月底转至斯洛文尼亚唯一一家24小时儿童和青少年精神病急诊门诊服务的所有儿童和青少年的病历进行了回顾性观察分析。我们提取了评估次数、有自杀意念的患者人数和自杀未遂的患者人数。对疫情前和疫情期间的同期进行了比较。还比较了因新冠疫情限制措施而学校关闭的月份和未关闭的月份。
在此期间，对1966名儿童和青少年进行了评估。当我们将所有有学校关闭的月份与所有无学校关闭的月份进行比较时，或者当比较有和无学校关闭的个别对应月份时，观察到的急诊就诊频率没有统计学上的显著差异。然而，与疫情前相应月份相比，疫情期间有自杀意念的患者[(16)= -2.739， = 0.015；W = 25.0， = 0.016]和自杀未遂的患者[(16)= -3.412， = 0.004；W = 14.5， =0.006]在个体上有统计学上的显著增加。
我们的结果表明，在新冠疫情期间，需要紧急心理治疗帮助处理自杀倾向和自杀未遂的斯洛文尼亚儿童和青少年人数有所增加。这种增加仅在疫情的第一年之后才显现出来。观察到的增加似乎与学校关闭没有直接对应关系，而更可能与疫情持续时间有关。
