Changes in daily mental health service use and mortality at the commencement and lifting of COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ policy in 10 UK sites: a regression discontinuity in time design
David Baldwin,
Andrea Cipriani,
Robert Stewart,
Ann John,
Neil Nixon,
Matthew Broadbent,
Shanaya Rathod,
David Osborn,
Rob Waller,
Sabine Landau,
Peter Phiri,
Ioannis Bakolis,
Shanquan Chen,
Rachel Sokal,
Andrew McIntosh,
Dan W Joyce,
Jonathan Lewis,
Caroline A Jackson,
Jane Beenstock,
Paul Bibby,
Rudolf Cardinal,
Karthik Chinnasamy,
Simon Douglas,
Philip Horner,
Sze Chim Lee,
Tanya Smith
Affiliations
David Baldwin
4 Respiratory Medicine, Nottingham University Hospitals, Nottingham, UK
Andrea Cipriani
professor of psychiatry and director of the Oxford Precision Psychiatry Lab
Robert Stewart
Department of Psychological Medicine, King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, London, UK
Ann John
Population Data Science, Swansea University Medical School, Swansea, UK
Neil Nixon
Division of Psychiatry and Applied Psychology, University of Nottingham Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Nottingham, UK
Matthew Broadbent
Department of Psychological Medicine, IoPPN, King’s College London, London, UK
Shanaya Rathod
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK
David Osborn
Division of Psychiatry, UCL, London, UK
Rob Waller
3 School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Sabine Landau
Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King`s College London, London, UK
Peter Phiri
10 Research & Innovation Department, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK
Ioannis Bakolis
Centre for Implementation Science, King’s College London, London, UK
Shanquan Chen
2 International Center for Evidence in Disability, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK
Objectives To investigate changes in daily mental health (MH) service use and mortality in response to the introduction and the lifting of the COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ policy in Spring 2020.Design A regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) analysis of daily service-level activity.Setting and participants Mental healthcare data were extracted from 10 UK providers.Outcome measures Daily (weekly for one site) deaths from all causes, referrals and discharges, inpatient care (admissions, discharges, caseloads) and community services (face-to-face (f2f)/non-f2f contacts, caseloads): Adult, older adult and child/adolescent mental health; early intervention in psychosis; home treatment teams and liaison/Accident and Emergency (A&E). Data were extracted from 1 Jan 2019 to 31 May 2020 for all sites, supplemented to 31 July 2020 for four sites. Changes around the commencement and lifting of COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ policy (23 March and 10 May, respectively) were estimated using a RDiT design with a difference-in-difference approach generating incidence rate ratios (IRRs), meta-analysed across sites.Results Pooled estimates for the lockdown transition showed increased daily deaths (IRR 2.31, 95% CI 1.86 to 2.87), reduced referrals (IRR 0.62, 95% CI 0.55 to 0.70) and reduced inpatient admissions (IRR 0.75, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.83) and caseloads (IRR 0.85, 95% CI 0.79 to 0.91) compared with the pre lockdown period. All community services saw shifts from f2f to non-f2f contacts, but varied in caseload changes. Lift of lockdown was associated with reduced deaths (IRR 0.42, 95% CI 0.27 to 0.66), increased referrals (IRR 1.36, 95% CI 1.15 to 1.60) and increased inpatient admissions (IRR 1.21, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.42) and caseloads (IRR 1.06, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.12) compared with the lockdown period. Site-wide activity, inpatient care and community services did not return to pre lockdown levels after lift of lockdown, while number of deaths did. Between-site heterogeneity most often indicated variation in size rather than direction of effect.Conclusions MH service delivery underwent sizeable changes during the first national lockdown, with as-yet unknown and unevaluated consequences.
