Comparison of Patients Diagnosed with First Episode Psychosis in the Psychiatry Clinic in the 1-Year Period before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: Several cases of psychosis caused directly or indirectly by the COVID-19 pandemic have been identified. Especially psychosocial stress factors are thought to trigger first-episode psychosis. The aim of this study was to compare the sociodemographic and clinical features of the cases diagnosed with psychotic disorder for the first time in the two periods 1 year before and 1 year after the date of 11.03.2020, when COVID-19 was first detected in Turkey and COVID-19 was declared as a pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO).

Subjects And Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, we compared age, gender, marital status, and clinical characteristics of 27 pre-pandemic (PR) and 32 post-pandemic (PS) patients during their first psychotic episode.

Results: We compared age, gender and clinical features of PR and PS cases and no statistically significant difference was found (age p=0.836, gender p=0.091, clinical features p=0.579).

Conclusions: There are a limited number of studies comparing first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients in the PR and PS periods. This is the first study conducted in Turkey on this subject. The present study may contribute to the literature by examining the impact of the pandemic process on the epidemiology of psychiatric diseases.