Children and adolescents who have been admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) may have a higher risk of mental illness years later compared with those who have never been to an ICU, a study in the Journal of Affective Disorders has found. Further, the risks for specific mental illnesses varied depending on the condition underlying the ICU admission.
Ping-Chung Wu, M.D., of the Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan, and colleagues examined data from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance program for 8,704 individuals who were admitted to an ICU as children or adolescents (mean age 10.33) between 1996 and 2013 and survived their ICU stay. The researchers matched these ICU survivors to 87,040 individuals without ICU stays (controls) according to age, sex, family income, and residence. Follow-up ranged from one month to roughly 17 years, with a mean follow-up of about 9.6 years.
Compared with the control group, patients who had been admitted to the ICU had an increased risk of the following mental illnesses during follow-up:
- 4.67 times the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- 3.19 times the risk of schizophrenia
- 2.02 times the risk of bipolar disorder
- 1.96 times the risk of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- 1.68 times the risk of major depressive disorder
Patients who had an ICU stay of three days or more had a higher risk of these conditions compared with those whose ICU stay was less than three days, except for bipolar disorder.
Risk among patients admitted to an ICU varied according to the conditions that prompted the ICU stay. For example, the risk of schizophrenia was highest among patients admitted for diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs, the nervous system, and the digestive system. Risk for PTSD was highest in patients admitted for respiratory diseases, while risk of OCD was highest in patients with genitourinary diseases.
“The subanalysis results stratified by type of critical illness can help clinicians to establish optimal MPD [major psychiatric disorder] screening and prevention strategies for high-risk groups; they can also serve as clinical evidence for future research on the etiologies of MPDs,” Wu and colleagues wrote. “Given our study results, the development of appropriate MPD prevention strategies should be emphasized for child and adolescent ICU survivors.”
For related information, see the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences article “Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Among COVID-19 Survivors After Hospitalization.”
(Image: Getty Images/iStock/gorodenkoff)
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