ER visits for teenage girls have increased during the pandemic

The proportion of adolescent girls visiting the emergency room for a mental health crisis increased by 22% in the second year of the pandemic, while that the proportion of teenagers going there has declined.

As the coronavirus pandemic dragged into its second year, a growing number of American families were so desperate to getting help for depressed or suicidal children that they brought them to the emergency room.

A large-scale analysis of private insurance claims shows that this increase acute mental health crises was largely caused by a single group: girls aged 13 to 17.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">In the second year of the pandemic, there there was a 22% increase in the number of adolescent girls visiting the emergency room with a mental health emergency compared to a pre-pandemic baseline, with an increase in the number of patients with suicidal behavior and eating disorders, according to the study of 4.1 million patients published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry.

During the same period, from March 2021 to March 2022, records showed a 9 percent drop in the number of adolescents who visited the emergency room for mental health problems.

Overall, the proportion of young people who visited the emergency room for mental health reasons increased by 7% from a pre-pandemic baseline. The study was based on privately insured Americans and does not capture what was happening in Medicaid or uninsured households.

Although the study did not did not seek to explain the wide gap between adolescent boys and girls, the authors pointed to school disruption, separation from peers, and conflict at home as stressors that may have hit girls particularly hard .

"I was particularly concerned that I was motivated by suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior, and self-harm," said Lindsay Overhage, author of the study and doctoral student in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

No single explanation has emerged for the gender gap in hospitalizations for mental health emergencies, a trend that predated the pandemic.

Research published in 2022 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that adolescents were greatly affected by job loss and parental food insecurity, with more than half of adolescents reporting emotional abuse from a parent and more than one in 10 reporting physical abuse. Two-thirds of pupils said they had difficulty completing their homework.

British data revealed that these difficulties were more pronounced for older girls from households poor, with the gap narrowing among the richest. households.

The gap may also reflect attitudes towards mental health care, with adolescent girls more likely to share their distress with each other, said Christine M. Crawford, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Boston Medical Center.

The girls' peers "might suggest them, maybe you should talk to your parents about what's going on, or maybe you should go and get help,” Dr. Crawford said.Social media platforms have become a big factor during the pandemic, he said. she said, when teens "searched on TikTok about mental health and mental health systems". acute mental health care - has been particularly problematic during the pandemic, as patients have often waited a long time for inpatient psychiatric beds to become available, the JAMA Insurance Claims Study found.

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The second year of the pandemic led to a 76% increase in the number of young people who spent two or more nights in the emergency room before admission, according to the study.