Department of Psychiatry, Chaohu Hospital of Anhui Medical University, No.64 Chaohu North Road, Hefei, 238000, Chaohu District, China.
Hefei Fourth People's Hospital, No.316 Huangshan Road, Hefei, 230022, China.
BMC Psychiatry. 2020 Aug 6;20(1):398. doi: 10.1186/s12888-020-02802-x.
The development of child psychiatric services in China has been slow and very limited resources have been allocated to support its growth. This study set out to investigate the child and adolescent inpatient psychiatric resources currently available in top-tier psychiatric hospitals in China and the characteristics of youth patients hospitalized on an adult unit.
As part of an official national survey, 29 provincial tertiary psychiatric hospitals in China were selected. Data from 1975 inpatients discharged from these hospitals from March 19 to 31, 2019 were retrieved and analyzed.
The mean number of youth psychiatric beds was 27.7 ± 22.9 in these hospitals and 6/29 hospitals had no youth beds. There were significantly more youth beds in developed regions than in less developed regions (P < 0.05). Most of the discharged youth patients were teenagers with severe mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. 7.5% (149) of the 1975 discharged patients were children or adolescents, however youth beds only accounted for 3.2% (804/25,136) of all psychiatric beds. 45.6% (68) of youth patients were discharged from adult psychiatric units.
Our findings highlight the lack of adequate youth psychiatric inpatient services for children and adolescents living in China, especially in less developed regions. There is an urgent need to build more child and adolescent psychiatric units in provinces where there are none, and to increase the number of beds within the units that exist presently.
中国儿童精神病学服务的发展缓慢，支持其发展的资源非常有限。本研究旨在调查中国顶级精神病医院目前提供的儿童和青少年住院精神病学资源，以及在成人病房住院的青少年患者的特征。
作为一项官方的全国性调查的一部分，在中国选择了 29 家省级三级精神病医院。从 2019 年 3 月 19 日至 31 日，检索并分析了这些医院出院的 1975 名住院患者的数据。
这些医院的青少年精神病床位平均数量为 27.7±22.9 张，有 6/29 家医院没有青少年床位。发达地区的青少年床位明显多于欠发达地区（P<0.05）。大多数出院的青少年患者是患有严重精神疾病的青少年，包括精神分裂症、抑郁症和双相情感障碍。1975 名出院患者中，有 7.5%（149 人）为儿童或青少年，然而，青少年床位仅占所有精神病床位的 3.2%（804/25136）。45.6%（68 人）的青少年患者从成人精神病病房出院。
我们的发现突出表明，生活在中国的儿童和青少年缺乏足够的青少年精神病住院服务，特别是在欠发达地区。迫切需要在没有儿童和青少年精神病病房的省份建立更多的儿童和青少年精神病病房，并增加现有病房的床位数量。
