The Impact of the Global Pandemic on Veterans with Serious Mental Illness (SMI): Healthcare Utilization and Mortality

Individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) experience barriers to accessing and engaging with healthcare, which may have been exacerbated during the emergence of the global pandemic and the rapid shift to telemedicine platforms, substantially decreasing healthcare utilization for non-COVID-19 disorders. Important repercussions on morbidity and mortality may be seen in the months and years to come, which may disproportionately affect high-risk populations, such as patients with SMI, with reduced access to technology platforms. In this study, we explored the impact of the pandemic on healthcare utilization and all-cause mortality rate in SMI compared to non-SMI individuals for the months of March-September 2020 and the same two quarters in 2019.