The clinical course of children treated in a short-term inpatient programme.

Forty-six children admitted to short-term, usually 4-6-week child psychiatric inpatient treatment were evaluated from multiple perspectives on admission, at discharge, and at 5-month, one-year, and 3-year follow-ups. The majority of the patients showed an improvement in functioning over the course of the 3-year follow-up. However, the 3-year stability of parent, teacher and clinical ratings of the child was very high. Furthermore, the majority of children had a high level of symptoms at follow-ups. Conduct problems had the highest stability and predicted the poorest outcome. The results stress the importance of long-term follow-up of children discharged from child psychiatric tertiary services. In many of these cases, the problems were persistent chronic problems that require continued monitoring and evaluation over many years. Short-term hospitalization should be seen as a pathway to further assistance rather than a complete form of treatment.