ArticleLancet regional health. Americas2021
The next pandemic: impact of COVID-19 in mental healthcare assistance in a nationwide epidemiological study.
Article in Lancet regional health. Americas, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Access and use of general and mental health services before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ open · 2025Pooled it
- Mental Health Impact of Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Individuals with Pre-Existing Mental Disorders: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Research.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health services: A systematic review.Journal of psychiatric research · 2022Pooled it
- Alcohol- and drug-related mortality in Brazil: an ecological and population-based study on changes observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2026Article
- COVID-19 and psychiatric inpatient admissions at a Saudi tertiary hospital, 2017-2024: an interrupted time-series study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Practical AI application in psychiatry: historical review and future directions.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- Concurrent Validity of Digital Measures of Psychological Dimensions Associated with Suicidality Using AuxiliApp.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Assessing the performance of Portuguese public hospitals before and during COVID-19 outbreak, with optimistic and pessimistic benchmarking approaches.Health care management science · 2025Article
- Gaps in psychiatric care before and after the COVID-19 pandemic among patients with depression using electronic health records.Psychiatry research · 2025Article
- Geopolitical determinants of mental health and global health inequities.Industrial psychiatry journal · 2024Article
- A mixed method study on the impact of COVID-19 on mental healthcare in Ghana: rethinking mental health service delivery.International journal for equity in health · 2024Article
- Closing the accessibility gap to mental health treatment with a personalized self-referral chatbot.Nature medicine · 2024Observational
- Computational Psychotherapy System for Mental Health Prediction and Behavior Change with a Conversational Agent.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2024Article
- Challenges and adaptations of mental health services during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Uganda.The Pan African medical journal · 2024Article
- Article
- Seeking help for mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal analysis of adults' experiences with digital technologies and services.PLOS digital health · 2023Article
- The effect of smartphone addiction on the relationship between psychological stress reaction and bedtime procrastination in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC psychiatry · 2023Article
- A Call to Action on Assessing and Mitigating Bias in Artificial Intelligence Applications for Mental Health.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2023Review
- Confirmation of increased and more severe adolescent mental health-related in-patient admissions in the COVID-19 pandemic aftermath: A 2-year follow-up study.Psychiatry research communications · 2023Article
- Changes in Revolving-Door Mental Health Hospitalizations during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A 5-Year Chart Review Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundStudies have reported the worsening of psychiatric symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, few studies have evaluated the impact on the access to mental health services during COVID-19. Our aim was to analyze temporal trends and prediction of appointments held in Brazil's public health system, to compare the observed and expected number of mental healthcare appointments during the COVID-19 pandemics.
methodsAn ecological time-series study was performed, analyzing mental health appointments before and during the pandemic (from 2016 and 2020) from the Brazilian governmental database. The structural break in the data series was assessed using the Chow test, with the break considered in March 2020. Bayesian structural time-series models were used to estimate current average appointments and the predicted expectation if there was no pandemic.
findingsCompared to the expected, between March and August 2020 about 28% less outpatient appointments in mental health were observed, totaling 471,448 individuals with suspended assistance. Group appointments and psychiatric hospitalizations were also severely impacted by the pandemic (decreased of 68% and 33%, respectively). On the other hand, mental health emergency consultations and home care increased during this period (36% and 52%, respectively).
interpretationOur findings demonstrate a dramatic change in mental health assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic, which corroborates a recent WHO survey. This phenomenon can aggravate the mental health crisis and generate a parallel pandemic that may last for a longer time than the COVID-19 pandemic.
fundingThis study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001.
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