Inpatient services

Abstract

Purpose of review: Inpatient services constitute the most highly specialized child and adolescent mental health provision and cater for the most severe disorders in this age group. In view of a number of mapping and audit initiatives in the UK in recent years and changing influences on admission policies worldwide, it is timely to review their function and effectiveness.

Recent findings: Recent attention has focused on describing service configurations and auditing against standards. National surveys of cost, referral processes and patient satisfaction are in progress in the UK. There seems to be an international trend toward a more severe, comorbid and aggressive patient group being admitted to inpatient services. There is a shortage of quality research into clinical outcomes of inpatient treatment, but controlled trials comparing hospital treatment with intensive community management are emerging.

Summary: Inpatient descriptive studies and uncontrolled outcome studies predominate in the literature. Although many children and adolescents benefit from admission to mental health inpatient facilities, the specific advantages of admission over intensive community management are uncertain.