ArticleBMC medicine2024
Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on depression incidence and healthcare service use among patients with depression: an interrupted time-series analysis from a 9-year population-based study.
Article in BMC medicine, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Depressive symptoms and associated factors among internally displaced people in Sub-Saharan africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Outcomes of Patients with Neurocognitive Symptoms Attending a Long COVID Clinic: A Longitudinal Cohort Study.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- Comparative Analysis of Prescriptions and Pharmacy Services in Internet-Based Psychiatric Hospital During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic: Retrospective Cross-Sectional Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Observational
- Association of Unemployment and Government Stringency With the Increased Burden of Anxiety and Depression Amid the Public Health Emergency: A Global Perspective.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Article
- Population-Wide Depression Incidence Forecasting Comparing Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average and Vector Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average to Temporal Fusion Transformers: Longitudinal Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Observational
- Bidirectional relationships between physical exercise and depressive symptoms among Chinese older adults evidence from the China family panel studies.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Impact of Remote Appointments on the Outcomes of Community Mental Health Nurses in Primary Care Since the Covid Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Cohort Study.International journal of mental health nursing · 2025Observational
- Limited scientific coherence between global mental health research and indicators of science, health, mental health, and society: a longitudinal analysis across world regions.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Service coverage for major depressive disorder: estimated rates of minimally adequate treatment for 204 countries and territories in 2021.The lancet. Psychiatry · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMost studies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on depression burden focused on the earlier pandemic phase specific to lockdowns, but the longer-term impact of the pandemic is less well-studied. In this population-based cohort study, we examined the short-term and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on depression incidence and healthcare service use among patients with depression.
methodsUsing the territory-wide electronic medical records in Hong Kong, we identified all patients aged ≥ 10 years with new diagnoses of depression from 2014 to 2022. We performed an interrupted time-series (ITS) analysis to examine changes in incidence of medically attended depression before and during the pandemic. We then divided all patients into nine cohorts based on year of depression incidence and studied their initial and ongoing service use patterns until the end of 2022. We applied generalized linear modeling to compare the rates of healthcare service use in the year of diagnosis between patients newly diagnosed before and during the pandemic. A separate ITS analysis explored the pandemic impact on the ongoing service use among prevalent patients with depression.
resultsWe found an immediate increase in depression incidence (RR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.10-1.33, p < 0.001) in the population after the pandemic began with non-significant slope change, suggesting a sustained effect until the end of 2022. Subgroup analysis showed that the increases in incidence were significant among adults and the older population, but not adolescents. Depression patients newly diagnosed during the pandemic used 11% fewer resources than the pre-pandemic patients in the first diagnosis year. Pre-existing depression patients also had an immediate decrease of 16% in overall all-cause service use since the pandemic, with a positive slope change indicating a gradual rebound over a 3-year period.
conclusionsDuring the pandemic, service provision for depression was suboptimal in the face of increased demand generated by the increasing depression incidence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate the need to improve mental health resource planning preparedness for future public health crises.
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