The Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
provides a comprehensive spectrum of outpatient and hospital-based
services.
Outpatient services include evaluating primary psychiatric
and behavioral disorders. Our professionals offer neuropsychological
and psychoeducational assessments and consultation for children
and adolescents who have primary illnesses complicated by problems
of adjustment or neurological difficulties. Outpatient treatment
may involve individual, group and family psychotherapy and psychopharmacology,
tailored to the individual needs of the child and family.
The inpatient program offers psychiatric evaluation
and treatment services to children and adolescents with more serious
problems, such as eating disorders, mood disorders, obsessive
compulsive and Tourette's disorder, psychosis, or serious medical
illness complicated by noncompliance or other psychiatric disorders.
The Cleveland Clinic's inpatient services provide care to children
between the ages of 4 and 18.
The supervising inpatient child psychiatrist works
closely with a team of pediatricians, pediatric psychologists,
psychiatric nurses, social workers and occupational therapists
to develop an appropriate treatment plan for each child. Parents
and other family members are actively involved in the diagnostic
and treatment process on the inpatient units.
With shorter inpatient stays now the norm, the section
offers transitional partial hospital programs. Inpatient hospital
treatments and educational services are provided during the day,
and the child returns home overnight to facilitate a smooth transition
back to the family, home and school.
For children who are hospitalized at The Children's
Hospital at The Cleveland Clinic, our psychiatric consultation-liaison
service is available. Indications for consultation include suicidal
behavior; psychopharmacologic assessment; delirium; disruptive
behavior interfering with medical treatment; complex diagnostic
dilemmas such as conversion syndromes; and coping with major or
chronic medical illness, including transplantation, cardiac surgery
and cancer.
Through its collaborations with community mental
health agencies, including Beech Brook, New Directions, and the
Positive Education Program, the section has access to additional
clinical services, including community-based partial hospital/day
treatment, adolescent chemical dependency services, residential
treatment, therapeutic foster care and in-home treatment, among
other services.
Pediatric and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit
The 13-bed Psychiatric Unit at The Children's Hospital at The
Cleveland Clinic is designed to optimize patient care in a nontraditional
hospital setting. The comfortable, dormitory-style, three-bed
rooms provide a homelike atmosphere. Intervention is provided
by board-certified pediatric and adolescent psychiatrists, pediatric
psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists and social workers.
During their stay, children wear normal school or
play clothes and attend school five hours a day. The unit's focus
of care is helping children develop self-esteem, learn to set
and accomplish goals, and make decisions about their own treatment.
