Mental health of help-seeking outpatients pre and post COVID-19: A real-world data, multicentre study

A great deal of research addresses the mental health implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the general population. Little is known about the implications for mental health of help-seeking outpatients and for the effectiveness of mental health services. The present study investigated the mental health and treatment response of help-seeking outpatients before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Routine outcome monitoring data from 3706 clients in the United States and Northern Europe was analysed using multilevel modelling with global subjective well-being as the dependent variable.

As opposed to before the pandemic, during the pandemic, well-being scores were significantly higher at intake and improvement throughout treatment was significantly smaller in the US sample, while both were comparable in the EU sample.

Although there is also evidence of less effective treatments since the pandemic, no conclusive picture emerges that portrays the impact of the pandemic on mental health as uniform. More research is needed to elucidate the impact of the pandemic on the help-seeking population.