SynthesisEuropean child & adolescent psychiatry2026
Change of antidepressant utilization in children, adolescents and young adults in Europe before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.
Synthesis in European child & adolescent psychiatry, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trends in Mental Health Diagnoses Among Children and Adolescents Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Large German State.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Population-Based Trends in Antidepressant Dispensing Among Children and Adolescents in Manitoba, Canada.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2026Article
- Evolution of Paris' public hospital psychiatrics outpatients from 2019 to 2023: a retrospective cohort study.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Antidepressant prescribing pattern in Croatia: a retrospective, longitudinal study from 2017 to 2022.Croatian medical journal · 2026Article
- Psychotropic dispensing in Greek adolescents and young adults: national trends and regional variation.Frontiers in drug safety and regulation · 2026Article
- Changes in youth public psychiatric service utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: an observational study.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Article
- Depressive and anxiety disorders in Polish children across the COVID-19 pandemic: a nationwide registry-based time-trend analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn recent decades, antidepressant utilization among young persons in Western countries has increased, raising concerns about overprescribing and safety. The COVID-19 pandemic and respective restrictions might have impacted not only youth's mental health but also antidepressant prescribing. Our aim was to systematically investigate changes in antidepressant utilization during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic periods in European young persons.
methodsThis systematic review was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42024559951). Observational studies with ≥ 100 European young persons (0-24 years) reporting prevalence or incidence data in antidepressant utilization before and during the pandemic (2018/2019 vs. 2021/2022) were included and percentage changes between two time periods calculated. MEDLINE (via PubMed), PsycINFO, and EMBASE were searched from January 1, 2021 to July 3, 2024 and supplemented by citation searching. Study quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute's tool.
findingsWe screened 4,416 records for eligibility and included eight studies covering data from Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden (n = 4 from Nordic countries). The number of included young persons ranged from 1071 to 3,455,521 and all studies used secondary data, mostly from registries. All studies showed a relative increase in overall antidepressant use during the COVID-19 pandemic, with variability between countries ranging from 23 to 52%. Antidepressant utilization showed higher increases in adolescents (n = 3 studies) and females (n = 3 studies). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors were more common (73.9-90.9%; n = 3 studies) than other antidepressant classes.
interpretationDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, antidepressant utilization in young persons increased modestly in all studied European countries. This increase may mirror the surge in mental health problems in young persons during the pandemic, but may also reflect altered patterns of mental health services availability.
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