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Unveiling the Patterns: Exploring Social and Clinical Characteristics of frequent Mental Health Visits to the Emergency Department – A Comprehensive Review
Zhang, Z., & Das, S. (2024). Unveiling the patterns: exploring social and clinical characteristics of frequent mental health visits to the emergency department—a comprehensive systematic review. Discovery in Mental Health, 4, 17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-024-00070-9
Zhang, Z., & Das, S. (2024). Unveiling the patterns: exploring social and clinical characteristics of frequent mental health visits to the emergency department—a comprehensive systematic review. Discovery in Mental Health, 4, 17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-024-00070-9
Zhang, Z., & Das, S. (2024). Unveiling the patterns: exploring social and clinical characteristics of frequent mental health visits to the emergency department—a comprehensive systematic review. Discovery in Mental Health, 4, 17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-024-00070-9
Zhang, Z., & Das, S. (2024). Unveiling the patterns: exploring social and clinical characteristics of frequent mental health visits to the emergency department—a comprehensive systematic review. Discovery in Mental Health, 4, 17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-024-00070-9
Abstract
Background Frequent presenters (FPs) define a group of individual who visit hospital emergency depart-ment (ED) frequently for urgent care. Many among the group present with main diagnosis of mental health conditions. This group of individual tend to use ED resources disproportionally and significantly affect overall healthcare outcome. No previous reviews have examined the profiles of FPs with mental health conditions. Aims This study aims to identify the key socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of patients who frequently present to ED with mental health primary diagnosis by performing systemic review from existing literature. Method PRISMA guideline was used. PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus and Web of Science (WOS) were searched in May 2023. A manual search on reference list of included articles were conducted at same time. Covidence was used to perform extraction and screening, completed by two authors independently. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined. Results The abstracts of 3341 non-duplicate articles were screened with 40 full texts assessed for eligi-bility. 20 studies were included from 2004-2022 conducted in 6 countries with total patient number of 25688 (52% male, 48% female, mean age 40.7 years old). 27% were unemployed, 20% married, 41% homeless, and 17% had tertiary or above education. 44% had history of substance abuse or alcohol dependence. Top 3 diagnosis are found to be anxiety disorders (44%), depressive disorders (39%) and schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders (33%). Conclusion On average, FPs are middle aged and equally prevalent in both gender. Current data lacks rep-resentation for gender diverse group. They are significantly associated with high rate of unem-ployment, homelessness, lower than average education level, and being single. Anxiety disor-der, depressive disorder, and schizophrenia spectrum disorders are the most common clinical diagnosis associated with the group.
Public Health and Healthcare, Health Policy and Services
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
