Monitoring child mental health related emergency department visits in New York City

From 2001-2011, mental health-related hospitalizations and ED visits increased among United States children nationwide. During this period, mental health-related hospitalizations among NYC children increased nearly 23%. To estimate mental health-related ED visits in NYC and assess the use of syndromic surveillance chief complaint data to monitor these visits, we compared trends from a near real-time syndromic system with those from a less timely, coded ED visit database. 

Objective

To assess the use of syndromic surveillance to assess trends in mental health-related emergency department (ED) visits among school-aged children and adolescents in New York City (NYC).