Background:
COVID 19 lockdown has an impact on the mental health of the general population, COVID patients, and health professionals. However, knowledge about its impact on psychiatric patients is limited.
Objectives:
To assess the mental health outcomes among psychiatric patients due to disruption of access to psychiatric services caused by the COVID 19 lockdown.
Materials and Methods:
It was a single-center, cross-sectional, observational, pragmatic study conducted at a tertiary care psychiatric hospital. All consecutive psychiatric patients presented to review in the outpatient department for 3 weeks following the relaxation of lockdown were screened, and a total of 305 eligible patients were enrolled. A semi-structured questionnaire was applied to capture the mental health status of the patients.
Results:
More than three-fourths (78.3%) of patients were off medications during the lockdown. During lockdown, more than half (64.3%) of patients' mental health conditions worsened, and significantly more in those who were not on medications. More than half of patients who were doing well before lockdown showed re-emergence of symptoms, and it was more commonly seen in mood disorder patients, followed by schizophrenia and other psychotic disorder patients. Thirty-one (10.1%) patients reported self-harm ideas; six (1.9%) claimed to have made self-harm attempts during lockdown.
Conclusions:
COVID-19 lockdown has worsened the mental health status of psychiatric patients. Strengthening community-based psychiatric care in tie-up with telepsychiatry services and adopting new innovative measures may help face such eventualities in the future.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.