Patterns of Emergency Care for Depressive and Anxiety Disorders by Age and Sex
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68178/dqtjyx36Keywords:
Depresión; Ansiedad; Servicios Médicos de Urgencia; Salud Mental; Odds RatioAbstract
Objective: To describe the frequency of emergency care for depressive and anxiety disorders and to estimate the associations of sex and age with these emergency visits in the Peruvian population.
Methods: Observational, retrospective, cross-sectional study based on records from the Peruvian Ministry of Health between January 2021 and November 2022. A total of 3,423 emergency visits for depressive disorders and 8,792 for anxiety disorders were identified. Associations with sex and age were assessed using Pearson’s chi-square test and odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals.
Results: Women accounted for 74.2% of emergency visits for depression and 65.8% of visits for anxiety. Compared with men, women had an OR of 2.14 for depression and 1.44 for anxiety. Individuals younger than 18 years had an OR of 3.15 for emergency visits due to depression, whereas adults had an OR of 2.06 for emergency visits due to anxiety.
Conclusions: Differences by sex and age were observed in the distribution of emergency visits for depression and anxiety in the analyzed records. These findings describe associations between demographic characteristics and diagnoses recorded in emergency care and should not be interpreted as causal effects.
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