Recognition of schizophrenia and quality of treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic: A Danish nationwide study

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated the state of ill-health among patients with schizophrenia. We examined the number of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, the number of hospital admissions and outpatient contacts and the quality of treatment during the pandemic in comparison with the previous years.

METHODS: We identified patients ≥18 years old registered in the Danish Schizophrenia Registry from 2016 to 2022. Using a generalized linear model, we estimated prevalence ratios (PR) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI) for each variable of interest.

RESULTS: A minor reduction in the number of new cases, admissions and outpatient contacts was seen during the first lockdown; however, there was no overall change across the pandemic period compared with the pre-pandemic period. We found no change in the proportion of patients who were interviewed using a diagnostic tool (37.0 % during pandemic vs 37.9 % pre-pandemic; PR = 0.87; 95 % CI 0.68-1.12) or received family intervention (57.7 % vs 57.1 %; PR = 0.97; 95 % CI 0.81-1.15), and no decrease was observed in the proportion of patients assessed for social support. Furthermore, no change in the proportion of patients re-admitted within 30 days (35.9 % vs 35.0 %; PR = 0.96; 95 % CI 0.88-1.07) or screened for suicide risk in relation to discharge (55.2 % vs 56.8 %; PR = 0.96; 95 % CI 0.97-1.09) was observed.

CONCLUSIONS: Recognition and treatment of schizophrenia was minimally affected during the first lockdown, but across the pandemic period no overall change was observed. The quality of treatment of schizophrenia was unchanged.