The impact of changes in mental health services in response to COVID-19 on people with mental health conditions: protocol for a rapid review

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptions to mental health services, forcing the rapid implementation of alternative ways of delivering services alongside a greater immediate, and continuously growing, demand across those services. The care and level of mental health service provided are felt to be inadequate to respond to the increasing demand for mental health conditions in the time of the pandemic, leading to an urgent need to learn from service change and consequences to inform solutions and plans to support the NHS post-pandemic plan in the UK. This rapid review aims to understand the changes in mental health services during the pandemic and summarise the impact of these changes on the health outcomes of people with mental health conditions.

Methods and analysis

Cochrane CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycInfowill be searched for eligible studies with key terms indicating mental health AND COVID-19 AND health services. Studies will be included if objective and subjective effects of changes to mental health services in response to COVID-19 are reported on adults with mental health conditions, peer-reviewed and published in the English language. Study selection and data extraction will be undertaken dependently by two reviewers. Evidence will be summarised narratively and in a logic model.

Ethics and dissemination

Ethics approval is not required for this review. A list of interventions/services/models of care delivered to people with mental health conditions will be grouped as “Do”, “Don’t” and “Don’t know” based on the evidence on effectiveness and acceptability. The results will be written for publication in an open-access peer-reviewed journal and disseminated to the public and patients, clinicians, commissioners, funders, and academic conferences.

PROSPERO registration number

CRD42022306923

Strengths and limitations of this study

• This is a rapid review with a systematic search of literature

• Evidence on changes to mental health services and associated health outcomes will be examined to make practice recommendations

• This review will provide the evidence base to inform solutions and plans to support the mental health service provision for the post-pandemic period

• Some limitations to the study design include limited to OECD studies, exclusion of non-English studies, publication bias, quality of data, selection bias, and no quality assessment in the rapid evidence review.