The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the mental health of adolescents and young adults, with an increase in demands for self-harm and overdose, especially among 13- to 18-year-olds, according to a worrying new national study of medical and insurance records. claims.
FAIR Health, a nonprofit organization that collects data from the largest database of privately billed health insurance claims in the United States, examined 32 billion records and studied age groups 13-18 and 19-22 years.
The organization tracked monthly changes from January to November 2020, compared to the same period last year.
In March and April 2020, total mental health statements for 13- to 18-year-olds, as a percentage of all medical claim lines, doubled approximately compared to the two months of 2019, according to the study.
Overdose claims specifically in this age group increased to 94.91% of all medical claims in March 2020 and to 119.31% in April 2020, compared to the same period last year. previous.
Complaint lines for substance use disorders also increased as a percentage of all claims in March (64.64%) and April (62.69%) of 2020, compared to the corresponding months of 2019.
Also in the 13-18 age group, in April 2020, the major depressive disorder claim lines increased by 83.9% and the generalized anxiety disorder claim lines increased by 93 , 6%, according to the study.
Overall, the 19-22 group had similar, but less pronounced, mental health trends than the younger group.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, especially among young people,” FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd said in a statement.
“The findings of our new report have implications for all caregivers of young people, including providers, parents, educators, policy makers and payers,” he added.
Those seeking mental health help increased during that time, despite declining other medical claims, Gelburd noted.
“We clearly see a reduction in people accessing health care, especially in March and April, but we see continued use of mental health services during this period,” he told MedPage Today:
“The need for mental health services persisted and somehow increased during this period.”
His team also found that gender disparities in mental health services that existed before the pandemic widened.
Although girls accounted for two-thirds of pre-outbreak lines, the percentage of claims attributed to women jumped from March to 71% in November 2020.
“These results are generally consistent with other researchers’ findings that women are nearly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with mental illness, ”the report said.
The study also showed a significant increase in intentional self-injury claims as a percentage of all medical claims, up 91% in March and nearly doubling in April 2020 compared to 2019, it reported. MedPage Today.
The researchers found that women were up to five times more likely than men to be treated for intentional self-harm.
Compared August 2019 with August 2020 in the Northeast, for group 13-18, there was a 333.93 percent increase in intentional self-harm claims, a higher rate than any other region in any month studied for the group.
Dr. Jess Shatkin, of the Children’s Studies Center at Langone Medical Center in New York City, said that while the data isn’t surprising, “it speaks to something that has worried us all.”
“We know teens already have high rates of mental illness,” Shatkin told MedPage Today. “Now [with the pandemic], her parents start fighting, with relationships, jobs, food security. It simply increases the advantage. We already see vulnerability and that makes them more vulnerable. ”
FAIR Health’s new white paper, the seventh of its COVID-19 studies, is entitled “The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health: A Study of Private Health Claims.”