Perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on child and adolescent psychiatric services after 1 year (February/March 2021): ESCAP CovCAP survey

Abstract

In April 2020, the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ESCAP) Research Academy and the ESCAP Board launched the first questionnaire of the CovCAP longitudinal survey to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) services in Europe. In this brief report, we present the main findings from the second questionnaire of the survey, one year after the COVID-19 pandemic began to hit Europe (i.e., February/March 2021). While service delivery to patients and their families was affected in a major way (reported by 68%) at the beginning of the pandemic, the majority of respondents (59%) in this second survey only reported a minor impact on care delivery. The use of telemedicine remained widespread (91%) but the proportion of CAP services partially closed or transformed to accommodate COVID-19 patients (59% in 2020) dropped to 20%. On the other hand, the perceived impact on the mental health and psychopathology of children and adolescents dramatically increased from "medium" (> 50%) in 2020 to "strong" or "extreme" (80%) in 2021. Four nosographic entities were particularly impacted: suicidal crises, anxiety disorders, eating disorders and major depressive episodes. Accordingly, this was associated with a substantial increase in the number of referrals or requests for assessments (91% reported an increase in 2021 while 61% reported a decrease in 2020). Finally, heads of the CAP departments expressed strong concerns regarding the management of the long-term consequences of this crisis, especially regarding the provision of care in light of the perceived increase in referrals.

Keywords: Adolescents; COVID-19; Child and adolescent psychiatry; Children; Europe; Mental health.