Youth emergency room visits and hospitalizations for depression and anxiety have decreased for Illinoisans since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report last week from researchers at Northwestern Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. {Health News Illinois]

The study analyzed all emergency room visits and admissions from Illinois youth with a coded primary diagnosis of depression and anxiety from January 2016 to June 2023, with data collected from 232 hospitals across the state. [Health News Illinois]

Outpatient emergency room visits for depression and anxiety — where patients go home rather than be admitted to the hospital — declined the most sharply, with the rates falling to pre-2016 levels in the three-plus years since the start of the pandemic.

“We wanted to see if COVID exacerbated the problem or changed it in any way,” Joe Feinglass, a research professor of medicine at Northwestern and the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “And the answer was, somewhat to our surprise, that COVID actually reduced the number of emergency room visits, which was expected during the shutdown, but was sustained into 2023.”

Inpatient hospitalization rates remained constant across the study timeline, which Feinglass said indicates the youth mental health epidemic is ongoing. Along with increasing the number of psychiatric beds and therapists, more needs to be done to address early mental health interventions and the use of social media, he and his colleagues said.

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