Lim Elijah Gin, How Ashley Ern Hui, Lee Julian Zhong Hui, Ganti Sameera, Omar Eunizar
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Singapore Med J. 2023 Sep 25. doi: 10.4103/singaporemedj.SMJ-2022-103.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant mental distress in populations globally. At the frontline of the pandemic, emergency departments (EDs) are the prime setting to observe the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of the population. We aimed to describe the trend of mental health-related ED attendances at an acute hospital in Singapore before and during the various stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is a retrospective, descriptive study of patients who presented to the ED between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020. Patients diagnosed with mental health-related systematised nomenclature of medicine who visited the ED during this period were identified and were placed into mental health diagnosis categories for analysis. A comparison was made between patients who presented before the pandemic (2019) and during the pandemic (2020).
During the study periods, we identified 1,421 patients, of whom 27 were excluded due to non-mental health-related diagnoses, leaving 1,394 patients for analysis. There was a 36.7% increase in mental health-related ED presentations from 2019 to 2020. The proportion of higher-acuity mental health-related ED attendances and number of suicide attempts also increased.
Our study described an increase in the proportion of high-acuity mental health-related ED attendances during the COVID-19 pandemic. Emergency physicians must be cognisant of the effects of the pandemic on mental health. Further research should be conducted to better equip the healthcare system for handling all aspects of the pandemic.
2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行已在全球范围内给人群造成了严重的精神困扰。在大流行的前线，急诊科是观察大流行对人群心理健康影响的主要场所。我们旨在描述新加坡一家急症医院在COVID-19大流行各个阶段之前和期间与心理健康相关的急诊科就诊趋势。
这是一项对2019年1月1日至2020年12月31日期间到急诊科就诊患者的回顾性描述性研究。确定在此期间到急诊科就诊且被诊断患有与心理健康相关的医学系统命名法的患者，并将其归入心理健康诊断类别进行分析。对大流行前（2019年）和大流行期间（2020年）就诊的患者进行了比较。
在研究期间，我们确定了1421名患者，其中27名因与心理健康无关的诊断被排除，剩余1394名患者进行分析。从2019年到2020年，与心理健康相关的急诊科就诊人数增加了36.7%。与心理健康相关的更高 acuity 急诊科就诊比例和自杀未遂人数也有所增加。
我们的研究描述了COVID-19大流行期间与心理健康相关的高 acuity 急诊科就诊比例的增加。急诊医生必须认识到大流行对心理健康的影响。应进行进一步研究，以使医疗系统更好地应对大流行的各个方面。
