The Experience of the Crisis Clinic at the Scientific and Practical Center for Mental Health of Children and Adolescents named after G.E. Sukhareva

Abstract

Suicidal behavior is a biopsychosocial problem in which the predominance of one approach or another cannot be identified. Therefore, strategies of suicide prevention should include not only medical and psychological but also social, legal, pedagogical, and other aspects.
 Purpose of the work: Development of an integrated approach that would provide primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of suicidal behavior in children, routing of patients, and coordinate actions both between the outpatient link and inpatient specialized care and between different departments.
 Materials and methods: Analysis of the dynamics of the number of hospital admissions to the G.E. Sukhareva Center with suicidal manifestations in 2011-2019. Organization of the Crisis Care Clinic, which specializes in helping children and adolescents aged 11 to 17 who are in a situation of psychological crisis, who have suicidal tendencies, self-injurious behavior, who experience grief, violence, abuse.
 Results: A comprehensive multi-professional approach is identified as the most efficient for the treatment and prevention of suicidal behavior in children and adolescents. In addition to medication, comprehensive psychotherapeutic assistance is recommended. The leading therapeutic approaches are cognitive-behavioral, including DBT, and family therapy.
 Conclusion: Therefore, the need for correction of sharp crisis conditions and the associated psychopathological phenomena (including suicidal and self-harming behavior) calls for coordinated efforts of specialists from different fields of knowledge. Тhe analysis of the experience of work with children and adolescents in the Crisis Clinic at the State Budgetary Institution "Crisis Clinic at the Research and Practical Center for Mental Health of Children and Adolescents named after G.E. Sukhareva of the Moscow Ministry of Health Care shows a high demand for such highly specialized structures, and the basic principles laid down at its creation - urgency, stage, and continuity of care, poly-professionalism with a focus on non-drug treatment methods, orientation towards the patient's family - are relevant.