Child-Adolescent Unit in a Psychiatric Hospital

An evaluation of an inpatient psychiatric unit for children

“…These findings add to the credibility of previous retrospective studies (e.g. Potter & Klein 1957, McTaggart 1965, Treffert 1969 claiming improvement for similar populations and which have been reviewed elsewhere (Barker 1974). These results also go some way towards justifying the decisions taken by clinicians to admit children to such units, and hence to employ a treatment mode which potentially has both beneficial and detrimental effects.…”

“…Also, while originally planned to provide custodial care, these units, along with psychiatry generally, have expanded their role from that of containing patients in a 'benign natural setting' to executing sophisticated forms of planned intervention (Hersov & Bentovim 1977). Contemporary children's units are, to some degree, moving towards purposefully utilizing admission as the 'treatment of choice' from among a number of alternatives including paediatric, child guidance and special educational provisions (Treffert 1969), and to providing an alternative to the out-patient service upon which child psychiatry was formerly based.…”