Kathryn E Mansfield, Rohini Mathur, John Tazare, Alasdair D Henderson, Amy R Mulick, Helena Carreira, Anthony A Matthews, Patrick Bidulka, Alicia Gayle, Harriet Forbes, Sarah Cook, Angel Y S Wong, Helen Strongman, Kevin Wing, Charlotte Warren-Gash, Sharon L Cadogan, Liam Smeeth, Joseph F Hayes, Jennifer K Quint, Martin McKee, Sinéad M Langan
BACKGROUND: There are concerns that the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK might have worsened physical and mental health, and reduced use of health services. However, the scale of the problem is unquantified, impeding development of effective mitigations. We aimed to ascertain what has happened to general practice contacts for acute physical and mental health outcomes during the pandemic. METHODS: Using de-identified electronic health records from the Clinical Research Practice Datalink (CPRD) Aurum (covering 13% of the UK population), between 2017 and 2020, we calculated weekly primary care contacts for selected acute physical and mental health conditions: anxiety, depression, self-harm (fatal and non-fatal), severe mental illness, eating disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, acute alcohol-related events, asthma exacerbation, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbation, acute cardiovascular events (cerebrovascular accident, heart failure, myocardial infarction, transient ischaemic attacks, unstable angina, and venous thromboembolism), and diabetic emergency...
April 2021: The Lancet. Digital health