To be a teenager today is to be faced with overwhelming pressure to grow up quickly. Some kids sail through adolescence relatively unscathed, while others struggle with depression, anxiety or other mental illness. If you are afraid for your child's mental health, residential psychiatric treatment can help. A teen who may be thinking of hurting herself or someone else is kept in a safe environment, with access to a psychiatrist, therapist and psychiatric medication. On the other hand, kids in residential treatment sometimes fall behind in school or learn maladaptive behaviors from other residents, so it is not a decision to be made lightly.
Questions to Ask Yourself, Your Child and Your Physician
The decision to commit a child for inpatient psychiatric treatment should not be made lightly. Teens should be taken to a pediatrician for a full physical assessment first and to a qualified child and adolescent therapist or psychiatrist if mental health treatment is warranted. Familymanagement.com recommends looking into all outpatient options before committing a child to residential care.
Illnesses that May Require Inpatient Treatment
Although psychiatrists are often hesitant to diagnose full-blown psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents, there are clear signs of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia that may necessitate stabilization in a hospital environment. Eating disorders or chronic self-injury may also require inpatient treatment lasting a month or more. A child who is hallucinating or threatening immediate harm to himself or someone else is in need of immediate medical attention. In this case, parents may wish to go straight to a psychiatric emergency room rather than a general medical one.
Levels of Care
Many psychiatric hospitals offer different levels of care depending on the individual's needs. Portland, Oregon's Trillium Family Services, for example, recommends subacute care, or short-term hospitalization, for children who need immediate stabilization in crisis. An example of an issue that might require subacute care is medication adjustment or suicidality in response to the teen's immediate situation. An adolescent struggling with persistent hallucinations who is deemed to be a danger to himself or others may require longer-term secure treatment on a locked hospital ward, where round-the-clock or one-on-one supervision is necessary. Other residential programs fall somewhere between these two extremes, with children working on coping skills in therapy while keeping up with schoolwork.
Types of Therapy
A popular form of treatment in residential and outpatient settings is cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT. CBT helps teenagers learn how to cope with distressing situations as they arise and to question erroneous beliefs about the situation that may influence their behavior. Psychiatric Times states that CBT is a short-term, situation-specific form of therapy. For hospitalized kids, this may mean they can learn valuable coping skills in the short amount of time for which their insurance will cover inpatient treatment. An offshoot of CBT called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy has been shown to be effective in treating eating disorders and self-injury.
Planning for Care
You can help your child feel more comfortable with the idea of residential treatment by discussing it with her when she is not in crisis. A teenager who has been diagnosed with a mental illness deserves to be well-informed about her options for treatment. It may help her to meet with her therapist, psychiatrist or pediatrician as a family and discuss the steps that will be taken if a crisis arises. You may wish to take her to visit different treatment centers or the psychiatric emergency room in your area so she feels she has a say in what will happen to her if her illness requires acute treatment.
