Trends in hallucinogen-associated emergency department visits and hospitalizations in California, USA, from 2016 to 2022.

Abstract

<h4>Background and aims</h4>Hallucinogens encompass a diverse range of compounds of increasing scientific and public interest. Risks associated with hallucinogen use are under-researched and poorly understood. We aimed to compare the trends in hallucinogen-associated health-care use with alcohol- and cannabis-associated health-care use.<h4>Design, setting and cases</h4>We conducted an ecological study with publicly available data on International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) diagnosis codes associated with emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations from the California Department of Healthcare Access and Information (HCAI). HCAI includes primary and secondary ICD-10 codes reported with ED or hospital discharge from every non-federal health-care facility licensed in California, United States, from 2016 to 2022.<h4>Measurements</h4>ICD-10 codes were classified as hallucinogen-, cannabis- or alcohol-associated if they were from the corresponding category in the ICD-10 block 'mental and behavioral disorders due to psychoactive substance use'.<h4>Findings</h4>Observed hallucinogen-associated ED visits increased by 54% between 2016 and 2022, from 2260 visits to 3476 visits, compared with a 20% decrease in alcohol-associated ED visits and a 15% increase in cannabis-associated ED visits. The observed hallucinogen-associated hospitalizations increased by 55% during the same period, from 2556 to 3965 hospitalizations, compared with a 1% increase in alcohol-associated hospitalizations and a 1% increase in cannabis-associated hospitalizations. This rise in hallucinogenic ED visits was significantly different from the trend in cannabis-associated (P < 0.001) and alcohol-associated (P = 0.005) ED visits. The hallucinogen-associated hospitalizations trend also significantly differed when compared with cannabis- (P < 0.001) and alcohol-associated (P < 0.001) hospitalizations.<h4>Conclusions</h4>Hallucinogen-associated emergency department visits and hospitalizations in California, USA, showed a large relative but small absolute increase between 2016 and 2022.

Topics & conditions

Detected automatically by Psychedelic Commons from the title and abstract, not labels from the source. They may be incomplete.

Keywords