[Principles for the management of children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders].

According to surveys conducted in different countries, the rate of psychological disturbances during childhood and youth is between 8 and 15 percent, the need for therapy exists in 5 percent of cases. The psychiatric care of children and juveniles always requires an interdisciplinary approach and the integration of the milieu in which the child lives and is growing up. Among the established facts of adequate psychiatric care for children and juveniles are the need for: careful diagnosis prior to any kind of therapy or intervention, consideration of the individual life circumstances, retention of the concept of illness, differentiation between psychological disorders and illness or problems typical of a particular age, avoiding intervention unless based on personal examination of the patient, retention of an interdisciplinary approach, and the further development of systems of care based not on theory but on empirical information. In the future, child and juvenile psychiatric care will have to devote greater efforts to securing attention equal to that for sick children and juveniles for those that are psychologically disturbed. It will also have to concern itself with improving therapeutic measures and with the evaluation of therapy.