EDCP Mission/Vision

Rapid Monitoring of Mental Health Visits Following the September 11 Attacks: An Additional Use for Regional Emergency Department Syndromic Surveillance

David Blythe, Leslie Edwards, Sowmya Natarajan, Karen Fujii, Harriet Highsmith,
Pam Putman, Dipti Shah, Jessica Totaro, Julie Casani.
MD Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene, Baltimore, MD

Introduction: Stress reactions and other mental health problems increase following events such as the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the recent intentional anthrax releases, resulting in increased demands for mental health services. We examined emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance system data to determine their utility for monitoring demand for mental health services and to correlate variation in visits with particular events.

Methods: Logs from selected Maryland, District of Columbia, and Virginia hospital EDs have been collected and analyzed daily since September 11. For two Maryland hospitals, the daily number and proportion of ED mental health visits were ascertained from ED logs. Variations in mental health visits following particular events were evaluated.

Results: The daily number of mental health visits at the two hospitals ranged from 1 to 24 visits per day (median: 13). The daily proportion of mental health visits ranged from 1.0% to 10.3% (median: 5.9%). The highest proportions were on September 12 (10.1%), October 9 (9.8%), and November 29 (10.3%). No strong correlations between visits and national or local anthrax-related events were identified. Data about visits occurring on any given day are available within 34 hours of the visit.

Conclusions: ED syndromic surveillance systems can provide useful and timely data about mental health service needs. Such information could be used to most efficiently direct the provision of mental health services following traumatic events.

Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene — Epidemiology & Disease Control Program