Impact of COVID-19 on psychoactive medication use among individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Ontario, Canada: A repeated cross-sectional study.

Publication date: Oct 01, 2024

Evidence for worsening mental health among individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) during COVID-19 sparked concerns for increased use of psychoactive medications. To examine the impact of COVID-19 on psychoactive medication use and clinical monitoring among individuals with IDD in Ontario, Canada. We conducted a repeated cross-sectional study among individuals with IDD and examined weekly trends for psychoactive medication dispensing and outpatient physician visits among those prescribed psychoactive medications between April 7, 2019, and March 25, 2023. We used interventional autoregressive integrated moving average models to determine the impact of the declaration of emergency for COVID-19 (March 17, 2020) on the aforementioned trends. The declaration of emergency for COVID-19 did not significantly impact psychoactive medication use among individuals with IDD. Provision of clinical monitoring remained relatively stable, apart from a short-term decline in the weekly rate of outpatient physician visits following the declaration of emergency for COVID-19 (step estimate: 21. 26 per 1000 individuals [p

Concepts Keywords
Autoregressive Adolescent
Canada Adult
Outpatient Aged
Psychoactive COVID-19
Weekly COVID-19
Cross-Sectional Studies
Developmental Disabilities
Disabilities
Disabled Persons
Female
Healthcare services utilization
Humans
Intellectual Disability
Male
Middle Aged
Ontario
Psychoactive medication use
Psychotropic Drugs
Psychotropic Drugs
SARS-CoV-2
Young Adult

Semantics

Type Source Name
disease MESH COVID-19
disease MESH developmental disabilities
disease MESH emergency
disease MESH Intellectual Disability

Original Article

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