Trends in Psychiatric Presentations Among Children and Adolescents in Alberta: A Pre-/Post-Pandemic Analysis (2017-2022).
Jacquelyn Paquet, Katharine Hibbard, Pamela Brett-MacLean
Physician psychiatric contacts for Alberta's youth rose during and after the pandemic, with the steepest increases among female adolescents.
Rural youth saw a 35.23% drop in physician encounters during the pandemic. Likely an access gap, not lower need.
Key findings
1Psychiatric presentation rates to physicians were significantly higher in the post-pandemic period than pre-pandemic (p = 0.014). Outpatient encounters, which made up 94.30% of all presentations, rose 17.73% during the pandemic and a further 21.30% post-pandemic.
2Adolescents (12–17) accounted for 63.98% of all presentations, with increases of 25.58% during the pandemic and 21.48% post-pandemic. In both emergency and inpatient settings, female adolescents had the highest presentation rates of any group.
3Rural youth showed a 35.23% decline in physician psychiatric encounters during the pandemic, partially recovering with a 17.40% increase post-pandemic. The authors interpret this as likely reflecting barriers to specialized medical care and telehealth infrastructure rather than reduced need.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Data come from physician billing codes only; encounters with school counsellors, community programmes, digital platforms, and allied health (including occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, and psychology) are invisible in this dataset. Retrospective design with no individual-level information on family history, socio-economic status, ethnicity, or prior psychiatric and medical history. Encounters are counted as separate events; the same child seen five times contributes five records, so the data overstate the number of affected individuals. All psychiatric diagnoses are pooled together, so patterns specific to, say, anxiety versus self-harm cannot be seen. The rural/urban split is based on proximity to metropolitan areas, which may not reflect actual service availability in a given community. The post-pandemic period is a single year (2022), so long-term trends are not captured. Length of inpatient stay and severity of illness are not reported.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest and report no funding source.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the 35.23% drop in rural physician encounters as evidence that rural youth had fewer mental health problems during the pandemic. The data only capture physician billing and miss school counsellors, community programmes, and allied health services. The authors themselves state this likely reflects access barriers to specialised medical care and telehealth, not a reduction in need.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →