ArticleSocial psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology2024
Temporal and spatial changes in the provision of mental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: a claims-based cohort study on patients with severe mental disorders.
Article in Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- [Utilization of mental health services in Germany during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic-Systematic review and meta-analysis].Der Nervenarzt · 2025Pooled it
- Mental health of individuals with pre-existing mental illnesses at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic: results of the German National Cohort (NAKO).Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
purposeMajor lockdowns were imposed in Germany from March until May 2020 and from December 2020 until May 2021. We studied the influence of these lockdowns, the strain on intensive care units and the strictness of COVID-19-related containment strategies on the utilization of mental health care among patients with severe mental disorders.
methodsWe used health insurance claims data to identify n = 736,972 patients with severe mental disorders shortly before the pandemic and n = 735,816 patients a year earlier. We applied entropy balancing to adjust for baseline differences by district. For a 12-month follow-up, we modeled monthly changes in utilization through meta-analytic models using both the COVID-19 stringency index and intensive care unit cases per 100,000 inhabitants as predictors. Our outcomes were changes in psychiatric hospital days and time treated by outpatient psychiatrists.
resultsPsychiatric hospital days declined by at least 7.7% in all calender month during the pandemic. Peak reduction rates were observed in April (- 27.9%), May (- 22.3%) 2020 and January 2021 (- 18.3%). Utilization changes were associated with the stringency index and the second lockdown. Time treated by psychiatrists was shorter in April (- 16.2%) and May (- 11.5%) 2020 and in January 2021 (- 10.5%), which was partially offset by higher utilization in June and September 2020. These utilization changes were associated with the stringency index and the strain on intensive care units during both lockdowns.
conclusionHospitals did not maintain the level of utilization during the pandemic, while outpatient psychiatrists adapted more quickly, presumably due to digital and telemedical care.
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