Adolescent mental health presentations to a New Zealand emergency department: A 16-year retrospective observational study

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Abstract
Objective: To examine trends in adolescent mental health presentations to Christchurch Emergency Department (ED) and contribute to the limited data on long-term trends in adolescent mental health within New Zealand. Method: A retrospective observational study of mental health presentations by adolescents aged 10–17 years to the Christchurch ED over 2007–2022. Data on patient demographics, rates of frequent presenters (≥5 presentations in a calendar year) and hospital admissions were analysed using simple descriptive statistics. Results: Rates of adolescent mental health ED presentations increased by 289% over 16 years, while rates of adolescent all-cause ED presentations increased by 9.8%. Female presentations increased over five-fold while male rates nearly doubled. Rates of medical hospital admissions increased by 70% and numbers of frequent presenters increased from 0 in 2007 to a peak of 19 in 2022. Conclusion: There has been a significant increase in adolescent mental health ED presentations over the study period. Demographic trends – including higher presentation rates for females and Māori – are consistent with those observed in the Youth2000 survey series. Ongoing monitoring of adolescent mental health ED presentation rates will be an important way of assessing the efficacy of any changes to the mental health system.

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