Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Personality Structure
Condition: Personality Disorders; Social Withdrawal of Childhood or Adolescence; Psychosocial Impairment
MeSH terms: Personality Disorders
Study type: Observational

Summary: 
      The study plan outlined here represents an investigation of instruments on the patients
      treated in the acute ward of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University Medical Center
      Hamburg Eppendorf (UKE). The psychosocial burden of the affected children and adolescents is
      evident due to the severity of the disorders leading to specific admission. The psychosocial
      burden can be defined as "psychological, social, or school-occupational functional impairment
      [...] that has arisen as a consequence of a mental disorder, a specific developmental
      disorder, or an intellectual impairment". The current research project aims to survey the
      severity of psychosocial distress, personality functioning impairment, and social withdrawal.
      A better knowledge of these factors may contribute to a more suitable, specialized treatment
      offer on the acute ward in the medium term.
    

Detailed description: 
      Children and adolescents who receive inpatient psychiatric treatment are counted among the
      most impaired in society. In addition to the usually very severe mental disorders, the
      patient:s often have psychosocial risk factors and traumatic life events in their history. As
      demand for psychiatric-psychotherapeutic care increases, many inpatient services have been
      driven to reduce costs, while parallel pressures to measure outcomes and effectiveness have
      increased. The call for evidence-based practice underscores the need to use valid and
      reliable measurement tools to capture changes in symptoms and functionality during short-term
      interventions and their effectiveness. Measuring this change allows for the evaluation of the
      interventions as a whole and identifying areas for improvement. Acute care units are a
      particular type of inpatient setting. The main goal of treatment is to stabilize the
      patient:s by reducing acute psychiatric symptoms, suicide risk, and danger to others. The
      challenge of care for this target group is to do justice to heterogeneous initial situations
      and offer customized help for each child and adolescent. The use of instruments to record
      psychosocial stress and personality disorders increases the chance that at least some of
      those affected can be prevented from developing a chronic course and thus long-term
      psychosocial impairment utilizing tailored interventions.
    

Observational model: Cohort
Time perspective: Prospective
Sampling method: Non-Probability Sample
Study population: 
        Clinical study participants for the diagnostic study are patients between the ages of 12
        and 17 who are undergoing treatment for a psychiatric illness in the acute care unit of the
        Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department at the University Medical Center
        Hamburg-Eppendorf.
      
Keywords: acute adolescent psychiatric units