Expansion of Outpatient Services and the Continuum of Care
There has been an increasing demand in the local community for comprehensive child and adolescent mental health services. Cincinnati Children's has been increasingly identified as the major provider for psychiatric care of children and adolescents over the past five years. The Division of Psychiatry has responded to these demands with the expansion of intensive psychiatric services so that we now have 67 inpatient psychiatric beds, 24 residential and up to 12 partial hospital patients.
In addition to the need for intensive services, there has been a growing demand for outpatient mental health services for children and adolescents. The child and adolescent patient frequently requires a complete continuum of care that includes rapid emergency assessment, inpatient care, and long-term pharmacological and psychological therapy. With the availability of increasingly effective pharmacotherapeutics, intervention strategies for child and adolescent psychiatric illness have increased.
To provide these services, the division has diversified and expanded its child and adolescent outpatient clinics. These include:
- Mood Disorders Clinic specializes in the assessment and management of children with severe mood disorders, including major depression and bipolar disorder
- Anxiety Disorders Clinic manages children and adolescents with illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and panic disorder
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Clinic provides treatment for ADHD and manages other forms of disruptive behavior disorders, such as oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder
The focus of these clinics is comprehensive assessment and pharmacological management when indicated.
Patient care is performed in close collaboration with the patient's pediatrician. Psychotherapy needs are managed by social workers and psychologists in both the Cincinnati Children's system and community-based programs. Many therapists are based at Cincinnati Children's satellite locations. We now provide psychiatric assessment at some of these sites, thus making comprehensive mental health care more accessible for a greater number of children in our community.
Divisional outpatient psychiatric services have also expanded to community-based treatment programs. Cincinnati Children's psychiatrists, along with trainees, provide psychopharmacological management and case supervision in two large, community-funded, mental health treatment programs. This new area for our division has expanded our ability to provide more care for indigent populations. This expansion of services has allowed us to complete another aspect in the continuum of care required by these often multi-need patients.
As demand grows for child and teen psychiatry services, we opened a neuropsychiatry unit this year for young people with both mental illness and severe cognitive disabilities. Until now, these children have not had specialized inpatient services for times of crisis. The program collaborates with community agencies to ensure a smooth transition to care outside the hospital.
Our psychiatric residential program cares for children with severe chronic psychiatric illness, frequently combined with cognitive disabilities and post-trauma effects. The level of medical and psychiatric care in this 33-bed program has been recognized by community agencies as the most effective residential program in the region. The program’s goal is to reintegrate these children into community care.
