Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on psychiatric hospitalizations of children and adolescents in Latvia.

ackground: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the daily lives and development of children and adolescents all over the world. There is emerging evidence of its negative mental health consequences, but more research is needed to understand risk and protective factors and their local variations.
Aims & Objectives: The aim of this study was to identify major trends in psychiatric paediatric inpatient characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Patients / Materials & Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study of 1337 inpatients admitted to the Child psychiatry clinic of Children's Clinical University Hospital, Riga, Latvia, in two symmetrical time periods - 300 days before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latvia. Descriptive statistics and statistical modelling was done to compare patient socio-demographic and clinical characteristics.
Results: There were 738 hospitalisations in the pre-pandemic period, 599 in the intra-pandemic period. In the intra-pandemic period there was an increase in the proportion of female patients (46.1% to 63.1%), patients coming from rural regions (38.5% to 47.6%), urgently admitted cases (38.9% to 56.9%), average age of the inpatients (10,1 (SD 4,7) to 12,2 (SD 4,3) years) and average length of stay (10,8 (SD 10,2) to 13,7 (SD 12,2) hospital days). All changes were statistically significant at pDiscussion & Conclusion: Major changes in psychiatric paediatric inpatient characteristics were found during the COVID-19 pandemic in Latvia, with patients becoming older, being admitted more often in urgent mental states and staying in the psychiatric ward for longer. The clinical population that seems to suffer from the short-term negative effects of the pandemic the most are adolescent girls with a tendency to internalise distress.