Real-World Data Study Finds Rise in Mental Health Hospitalization Among Teens in US and France

A newly-published study in JAMA Network Open found that hospitalizations for mental health crises in adolescents spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. The real-world data (RWD) study examined electronic health records (EHR) from 8 pediatric health centers in the two nations from February 2019 to April 2021, finding that the number of hospitalizations per month rose by 0.60% during the pandemic.

According to Pearl Steinzor, “The authors acknowledged certain limitations to their findings. First, they were unable to determine the primary cause of hospitalizations, and instead used all hospitalizations with at least 1 mental health condition to examine changes over time. Second, because the authors extracted data prespecified for 4CE, there was limited ability to test other characteristics of patients outside of the 4CE network data.”

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(Source: AJMC, December 16^th, 2022)