Demographic trends in a paediatric psychiatric emergency room in Copenhagen

Little is known about visiting patterns in paediatric psychiatric emergency departments (PPEDs) in Denmark. Our aim was to examine changes in the number of visits in the walk-in PPED in Glostrup, Copenhagen, since its inception in 2012 and to provide a clinical and demographic profiling of the visiting patients.

This was a retrospective descriptive study based on the registration logs kept by the triage nurses, comprising data of 2,062 visitors aged 5-17 years over a one-year period (2017). In addition, visiting numbers for the years 2012-2016 were extracted from electronic logs.

Visits almost doubled from 2012 to 2017. A total of 66.9% of the patients were female. The median age was 15 years. The most common reason for inquiry was suicidality. We found strong associations between female gender and suicidality as reason for inquiry and between male gender and mental anguish as reason for inquiry.

The substantial increase in visits may partly be explained by increased attention to paediatric mental health issues and a growing public expectation to psychiatric treatment. The fact that a large proportion of patients presents with suicidality shows that there is a need for acute paediatric psychiatric evaluation and treatment. Knowledge is lacking about how many patients present to the PPED with non-acute and mainly social problems and how best to handle this group of patients.

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