ArticlePediatric emergency care2023
Visits to Alberta Emergency Departments for Child Mental Health Concerns During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Examination of Visit Trends in Relation to School Closures and Reopenings.
Article in Pediatric emergency care, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trends in Canadian Suicide Mortality by Age and Sex From 2000 to 2024: Tendances en matière de mortalité attribuable au suicide au Canada selon l'âge et le sexe, de 2000 à 2024.Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie · 2026Article
- Healthcare Cost Associated with an Acute Mental Healthcare Bundle in Pediatric Emergency Departments.PharmacoEconomics - open · 2026Article
- Travel Distance and Its Impact on Wait Time for Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography in Patients with Cancers.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Article
- Child Well-Being and Family Quality of Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Child: care, health and development · 2025Article
- Rejoinder 1: Advocating for children in the presence of imperfect evidence: A reply to Black et al.Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry = Journal de l'Academie canadienne de psychiatrie de l'enfant et de l'adolescent · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveWe examined emergency department (ED) mental health visit trends by children in relation to periods of school closure and reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta, Canada.
methodsMental health visits by school-aged children (5 to <18 years) were extracted from the Emergency Department Information System, a province-wide database, from March 11, 2020, to November 30, 2021 (pandemic period; n = 18,997) and March 1, 2019, to March 10, 2020 (1-year, prepandemic comparator period; n = 11,540). We calculated age-specific visit rates and compared rate differences between periods of school closure (March 15-June 30, 2020; November 30, 2020-January 10, 2021; April 22-June 30, 2021) and reopening (September 4-November 29, 2020; January 11-April 21, 2021; September 3-November 30, 2021) to matched prepandemic periods. We used a ratio of relative risk to examine the risk of a visit during closures versus reopenings.
resultsThe cohort included 11,540 prepandemic visits and 18,997 pandemic visits. Compared with prepandemic periods, ED visit rates increased across all ages during the first (+85.53%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 73.68% to 100.41%) and third (+19.92%; 95% CI, 13.28% to 26.95%) school closures, and decreased during the second closure (-15.37%; 95% CI, -22.22% to -7.92%). During school reopenings, visit rates decreased across all ages during the first reopening (-9.30%; 95% CI, -13.94% to -4.41%) and increased during the third reopening (+13.59%; 95% CI, 8.13% to 19.34%); rates did not change significantly during the second reopening (2.54%; 95% CI, -3.45% to 8.90%). The risk of a visit during school closure versus reopening was only higher for the first closure with 2.06 times the risk (95% CI, 1.88 to 2.25).
conclusionsEmergency department mental health visit rates were highest during the first school closure of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the risk of a visit during this closure period was twice compared with when schools first reopened.
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