Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T02:48:24.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mental health in children and adolescents during the pandemic year 2020: Results from a department of child and adolescent psychiatry in Romania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2022

M. Opait ,
A. Floricel ,
L. Niculae  and
E. Andrei
M. Opait*
Affiliation:
Spitalul Clinic de Psihiatrie „Profesor Doctor Alexandru Obregia”, Child And Adolescent Psychiatry, Bucharest, Romania
A. Floricel
Affiliation:
Spitalul Clinic de Psihiatrie „Profesor Doctor Alexandru Obregia”, Child And Adolescent Psychiatry, Bucharest, Romania
L. Niculae
Affiliation:
Spitalul Clinic de Psihiatrie „Profesor Doctor Alexandru Obregia”, Child And Adolescent Psychiatry, Bucharest, Romania
E. Andrei
Affiliation:
Spitalul Clinic de Psihiatrie „Profesor Doctor Alexandru Obregia”, Child And Adolescent Psychiatry, Bucharest, Romania
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Introduction

Infectious diseases can disrupt the environment in which children live and have negative consequences for the well-being, development and mental health of this population.

Objectives

Our aim is to compare the number and diagnoses of patients admitted during the first COVID-19 pandemic year to patients admitted during the same period in the previous year.

Methods

Retrospective observational study of patients admitted between March 1, 2020 and February 29, 2021 and the analogous period of 2019-2020 in a child psychiatry unit. Microsoft Excel was used for descriptive statistics.

Results

In our first pandemic year, there were 47.9% less admissions to our inpatient unit (n=717), comparing to the previous year (n=1376). Regarding the outpatient-type evaluations, there were 37.7% more admissions than the previous year (n=1813). Considering the fact that the number of inpatiens was limited in 2020 due to the restrictive measures imposed, most of our patients were consulted on an outpatient basis. During the 5 weeks nationwide lockdown, 72 children were consulted, 42.8% representing psychiatry emergencies. Regarding the diagnoses made in the whole pandemic year, disorders of psychological development were the most common, with almost half of the total of admissions (44.4%). The number of autistic outpatients in the pandemic year (n=1004) was almost double than the one before (n=572).

Conclusions

Even though there was a reduction of admissions to the child psychiatry inpatient unit during the first pandemic year, we did not identify major differences regarding the discharge diagnoses comparing to the year before.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Keywords

Covid-19mental healthChildren
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 65 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 30th European Congress of Psychiatry , June 2022 , pp. S435
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.