Mental health-related visits in a pediatric emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Abstract We aimed to describe the epidemiology of all pediatric emergency department visits (focusing on mental health-related visits versus total visits) at the University Children’s Hospital of Nice (France) from 1 January to 31 December 2020 (year of the COVID-19 pandemic) and to compare it with the earlier 3-year period. The increase in mental health-related visits (44.2%) that we observed, while total visits decreased (30.0%), suggests an impact of the pandemic on children’s and adolescents’ mental health.

Keywords

• COVID-19 pandemic
• Child and adolescent psychiatry
• Mental health
• Pediatric emergency department visits