ArticleBMC psychology2023
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychiatric emergency consultations in adolescents.
Article in BMC psychology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Experiences of Care for Adolescents With Mental Health Difficulties in Acute Paediatric Services: A Systematic Review.Journal of clinical nursing · 2025Pooled it
- Changing mental health from disaster to disaster: analysis of emergency psychiatric visits during pandemic and earthquake periods.BMC public health · 2026Observational
- Causes and frequency of psychiatric counselling requests in hospitalized patients before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sabzevar, Iran between 2019-2020.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- "Psychiatric emergency consultations of minors: a qualitative study of professionals' experiences".BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Pediatric suicide attempts lagged during the COVID-19 pandemic: a European multicenter study.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2024Article
- Behavioral and Sleep Disorders in Children and Adolescents following COVID-19 Disease: A Case-Control Study.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThere is growing evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic, and its associated social distancing measures, affect adolescents' mental health. We wanted to examine whether and how the number and characteristics of adolescents' psychiatric emergency presentations have changed throughout the pandemic.
methodsWe extracted data from the records of 977 psychiatric emergency consultations of adolescents aged 12- 19 who had been referred to the mobile psychiatric emergency services in Rotterdam, the Netherlands between January 1
resultsThe number of psychiatric emergency consultations regarding adolescents increased over time: from about 13 per month in 2018 to about 29 per month in 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the increase was tempered. In the second wave a pronounced increase of psychiatric emergencies among adolescents with internalizing problems but not with externalizing problems was found.
conclusionDespite the reported increase of mental health problems in adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic, we did find a smaller increase in psychiatric emergency consultations in this group then would be expected considering the overall trend. Besides changes in help-seeking and access to care, a possible explanation may be that a calmer, more orderly existence, or more parental supervision led to less psychiatric emergency situations in this age group. In the second wave the number of emergency consultations increased especially among girls with internalizing problems. While there has been a particular fall in emergency referrals of adolescents with externalizing problems since the start of the pandemic it is still too early to know whether this is a structural phenomenon. It would be important to elucidate whether the changes in emergency referrals reflect a true change in prevalence of urgent internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents during the pandemic or a problem related to access to care.
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