Treatment Outcome of Adolescent Inpatients With Early‐Onset and Adolescent‐Onset Disruptive Behavior

Abstract

As EO inpatients are more likely to drop out, interventions should aim at motivating youngsters to continue treatment, particularly given the poor outcome in this group. Treatment may benefit both groups because those EO youths who stayed in treatment improved to the same extent as AO inpatients.

Evaluating outcomes following adolescent and youth mental health inpatient admissions: A systematic review

“…The mean LOS varied markedly between IPUs with a range of 7.5 days to 603 days. The IPU with the longest mean LOS (603 days) provided a specific treatment program for young people aged 16 to20 with severe disruptive behaviours and psychiatric disorders who had previously been treated by child welfare institutions and adolescent psychiatric institutions (de Boer et al, 2017). Another two studies reported on Simmons House Adolescent Unit which provides longer therapeutic approaches for planned admissions (mean LOS 208.25 days for the treatment group) and also accepts emergency admissions (mean LOS 39.54 days) (Kennedy et al, 2020; Lee et al, 2018).…”

“…While it is encouraging that improvements may be achieved with minimal LOS it remains difficult to make direct comparisons with improvements across longer LOS as intuitively, LOS will be influenced by other factors including models of care and severity and complexities of patients. For example, the study by De Boer et al focused on a specialized unit providing long term interventions (LOS ranging between 443 and 603 days) for young people with severe disruptive behaviours and psychiatric disorders who had previously been treated in generic psychiatric institutions (de Boer et al, 2017). Therefore, the use of LOS as an indicator of effectiveness of an IPU should be done with consideration to other variables.…”