9.5 Trends in Mental Health Concerns Reported to Two Statewide Pediatric Mental Healthcare Access Programs During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Objectives

Pediatric Mental Health Care Access (PMHCA) programs help increase access to mental health care by providing training, consultation, and resource/referral support to primary care providers (PCPs). This study compared trends in services provided by 2 PMHCA programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

Data were collected by the Maryland and Mississippi PMHCA programs during 2838 phone contacts with PCPs from January 2019 to March 2021. The data collected included service type, demographics, presenting symptoms, diagnoses, and clinical severity. The outcomes examined include the standardized difference in call volume for each program for the period, call type (ie, consultation, resources/referral networking), call severity based on the Clinical Global Impression–Severity scale (CGI-S), and

Results

In both programs, we found significant increases in call volume in the during–COVID-19 period as compared to pre–COVID-19; between August 2020 and March 2021, both programs had above-average call volumes every month. Both programs also had an increase in the complexity of patients that PCPs called about, with 30% of Maryland’s calls in the during–COVID-19 period about patients with multiple diagnoses as compared with 14% of calls pre–COVID-19, and 10% of Mississippi’s calls during COVID-19 were

Conclusions

Observed changes in PMHCA program usage suggests that pediatric PCPs were identifying more mental health concerns in their practices, and the identified concerns were more complex and, in some cases, more clinically severe than before the pandemic. Trends underscore the important role that PMHCA programs play in supporting PCPs with managing pediatric mental health concerns.

CON, R, TVM

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Supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Maryland Department of Health, Behavioral Health Administration

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