Department of Health Behavior, Society, & Policy, Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA.
Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Health Serv Res. 2022 Dec;57(6):1342-1347. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.14051. Epub 2022 Sep 4.
To assess the impact of COVID-19 on trends in postpartum mental health diagnoses and utilization of psychotherapy and prescription drug treatment.
Data were obtained from a large, national health insurance claims database that tracks individuals longitudinally.
We used interrupted time series models to examine changes in trends of postpartum mental health diagnoses before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and t-tests to examine differences in treatment.
We used billing codes to identify individuals who received mental health-related diagnoses and treatment in the first 90 days after a birth hospitalization. We excluded individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and those with an unknown payer at delivery.
Compared to the pre-pandemic period, the trend in new postpartum mental health diagnoses increased significantly in the post-COVID-19 period (0.06 percentage points [95%CI 0.01, 0.11]). Over 12 months, the percentage of new diagnoses was 5.0% greater relative to what would be expected in absence of COVID-19. The percentage of diagnosed individuals who did not receive treatment increased from 50.4% to 52.7% (p = 0.003).
Findings point to an urgent need to improve screening and treatment pathways for perinatal individuals in the wake of COVID-19.
评估 COVID-19 对产后心理健康诊断趋势以及心理治疗和处方药治疗利用的影响。
数据来自一个大型的全国性健康保险索赔数据库，该数据库对个体进行纵向跟踪。
我们使用中断时间序列模型来检查 COVID-19 大流行前后产后心理健康诊断趋势的变化，并使用 t 检验来检查治疗差异。
我们使用计费代码来识别在产后住院后 90 天内接受心理健康相关诊断和治疗的个体。我们排除了被诊断为精神分裂症或双相情感障碍的个体以及分娩时未知付款人的个体。
与大流行前相比，COVID-19 后(post-COVID-19)时期新的产后心理健康诊断趋势显著增加（0.06 个百分点[95%置信区间 0.01, 0.11]）。在 12 个月内，与没有 COVID-19 的情况下相比，新诊断的百分比增加了 5.0%。未接受治疗的诊断个体的百分比从 50.4%增加到 52.7%（p=0.003）。
这些发现表明，在 COVID-19 之后，迫切需要改善围产期个体的筛查和治疗途径。
