COVID-19 e saúde mental em adolescentes: alteração no uso de fármacos

Abstract

The pandemic of COVID-19 has brought several changes to the daily lives of people around the world. Restrictive measures used to contain the disease, such as quarantine, social withdrawal, and suspension of non-essential activities, can negatively affect people's emotional state, triggering an increase in depressive and anxiety symptoms, as demonstrated by several studies. One of the most affected age groups is adolescents, who are between 10 and 19 years old, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This worsening of mental health may imply changes in the use of medications such as antidepressants, anxiolytics, and sedative-hypnotics. With this the main objective of this research was to analyze whether there were changes in the use of antidepressants, anxiolytics, and sedativehypnotics, during the COVID-19 pandemic in adolescents. Monitoring medication consumption patterns may be of great interest, providing additional knowledge about the impact on health care delivery and access to these medications. Research assessing the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 on mental health is highly needed to target public interventions to the most vulnerable groups. In scenarios such as this, rapid reviews are recommended by the WHO. The methodology employed was an integrative literature review, which consists of a survey of previously published material. Articles and documents from the Scielo, PubMed, and Google Scholar databases were analyzed. The search for articles used combinations of the descriptor ''Covid-19'' with the descriptors: ''antidepressants,'' ''anxiolytics,'' ''hypnotics,'' and ''psychotropic'' in English and Portuguese. Articles published from the year 2020 to 2022 in English and Portuguese were analyzed. Most of the studies analyzed in this review pointed to a reduction in the consumption of these medications during the pandemic in this age group, and a corresponding decrease in access to mental health services was the reason most mentioned by the authors, with some data being presented to support this hypothesis.