Short-term psychiatric hospitalization of children.

Recent changes in psychiatric practice, fueled in part by national economic trends, have contributed to the increasing use of short-term psychiatric hospitalization for children. The authors discuss specific approaches to treatment planning, milieu therapy, family work, and individual therapy that help maximize a patient's stay on the short-term psychiatric unit for latency-age children at Tulane University Hospital. Data on diagnosis and length of stay of children admitted during the first two years of the unit's operation are presented, and specific attributes of latency development that affect the short-term process are discussed.