Mental health service activity during COVID-19 lockdown: South London and Maudsley data on working age community and home treatment team services and mortality from February to mid-May 2020
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Abstract
The lockdown and social distancing policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK has a potentially important impact on provision of mental healthcare; however, there has been relatively little quantification of this. Taking advantage of the Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) data resource with 24-hourly updates of electronic mental health records data, this paper describes daily caseloads and contact numbers (face-to-face and virtual) for home treatment teams (HTTs) and working age adult community mental health teams (CMHTs) from 1 st February to 15 th May 2020 at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM), a large mental health service provider for 1.2m residents in south London. In addition daily deaths are described for all current and previous SLaM service users over this period and the same dates in 2019. In summary, comparing periods before and after 16 th March 2020 the CMHT sector showed relatively stable caseloads and total contact numbers, but a substantial shift from face-to-face to virtual contacts, while HTTs showed the same changeover but reductions in caseloads and total contacts (although potentially an activity rise again during May). Number of deaths for the two months between 16 th March and 15 th May were 2.4-fold higher in 2020 than 2019, with 958 excess deaths.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.13.20130419: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: CRIS has received approval as a data source for secondary analyses (Oxford Research Ethics Committee C, reference 18/SC/0372). Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Considering limitations, it is important to bear in mind that the data are derived from a single site. …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.13.20130419: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: CRIS has received approval as a data source for secondary analyses (Oxford Research Ethics Committee C, reference 18/SC/0372). Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Considering limitations, it is important to bear in mind that the data are derived from a single site. Because complete data are being provided for that site with no hypothetical source population intended, calculation of confidence intervals was not felt to be appropriate for the descriptive data provided in this report; applicability to other mental healthcare providers cannot therefore be inferred and would need specific investigation. Profiles of services and catchment morbidity are also likely to vary. While the service activity data are likely to be correctly represented from the source record, delays in national registrations might result in an underestimate of more recent deaths. Classification of service types (in this case into HTT/CMHT groupings) is inevitably approximate and likely to vary between mental health service providers.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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