The effect of COVID-19 and socioeconomic inequalities on emergency department accesses for psychiatric conditions

Chiara Schepisi, Martina Ventura, Anteo Di Napoli, Massimiliano Aragona, Roberta Ciampichini, Valeria Fano, Christian Napoli, Martina Pacifici, Claudio Rosini, Caterina Silvestri, Fabio Voller, Alberto Zucchi and Alessio Petrelli

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 7, 1-19

Abstract: Background: COVID-19 produced a detrimental effect on mental health that could not be appropriately addressed due to a reduced accessibility of healthcare services, as patients with socioeconomic vulnerabilities faced the largest barriers in accessing healthcare during the pandemic. Methods: This is a multicentre longitudinal retrospective study that involves a population-based open cohort of residents and National Health Service (NHS)beneficiaries aged ≥ 10, enrolled in three large Italian areas from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2021 (n = 5,159,363). The primary outcome of interest was the First Mental Health Emergency Access (FMHEA); sex, age, deprivation level, citizenship and groups of diagnosis were considered as covariates. Crude incidence rates were calculated comparing the two time periods (pre- and post-COVID-19) by each covariate. In the context of interrupted time series (ITS), incidence rate ratios (IRR) of FMHEAs with 95%CI were estimated via an ITS analysis using a step-change negative binomial model. Temporal trend of FMHEAs was investigated through an ITS analysis on their monthly numbers. Results: During follow-up, 56,762 FMHEAs were observed. The multivariate analysis showed that before COVID-19, the rate of FMHEA was higher among the highly deprived (IRR: 1.28; 95%CI:1.22.-1.35 for highest vs lowest deprivation level), females, people aged ≤24 and ≥85 and immigrants. A significant interaction between the COVID-19 period and deprivation level was found: the probability of reduced FMHEA increased with the deprivation level. The greater impact of COVID-19 was found in the central age classes resulting in a reduction in the differences in FMHEA rates by age in the post-Covid-19 period. Conclusion: COVID-19 reduced incidence rates of ED accesses, but increased socioeconomic inequalities in the use of ED for mental health disorders.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0324305 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 24305&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0324305

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0324305

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().