The Experience of the Crisis Clinic at the Scientific and Practical Center for Mental Health of Children and Adolescents named after G.E. Sukhareva

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Suicidal behavior by children and adolescents has been and remains one of the most intractable of our social ills. Despite the general downward trend in suicide rates, children and adolescents remain one of the most at-risk groups. Suicidal behavior in all its manifestations is a biopsychosocial problem in which the superiority of one approach or the other cannot be unambiguously justified. It flows from this that strategies that aim to prevent suicide should weave together not just the medical and psychological aspects of the issue, but the social, legal, pedagogical, and other dimensions as well.

AIM: To develop an integrated approach that could provide primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of suicidal behavior in children, provide the routing of patients, and coordinate actions both between the outpatient link and inpatient specialized care and between different departments, primarily between the Moscow Department of Healthcare and the Department of Education.

METHODS: We analyzed the dynamics of the number of admissions to the Scientific and Practical Center for Mental Health of Children and Adolescents named after G.E. Sukhareva of Moscow Health Department (Sukhareva Center) with suicidal manifestations in 2019–2022. Organization of the Crisis Care Clinic (Crisis Clinic), which specializes in helping children and adolescents aged 11 to 17 who find themselves in a situation of psychological crisis, have suicidal tendencies, display self-injurious behavior, experience grief, violence, or have suffered abuse.

RESULTS: A comprehensive multi-disciplinary approach is identified as the most efficient way to treat and prevent suicidal behavior in children and adolescents. Psychopharmacotherapy is used to influence severe depressive symptomatology, reduce anxiety, moderate sedation, correct behavioral disorders, etc. In addition to medication, comprehensive psychotherapeutic assistance is recommended. The leading therapeutic approaches are cognitive-behavioral, including DBT, and family therapy, with the efforts of therapists concentrated on alleviating post-traumatic stress, depression, and behavioral problems, as well as resolving intrafamily conflicts.

CONCLUSION: The need to remedy severe crisis conditions and their associated psychopathological repercussions (including suicidal and self-harming behavior) calls for coordinated efforts on the part of specialists from different fields of knowledge related to childhood and adolescence. Our analysis of the experience of working with children and adolescents in the Crisis Clinic at the Sukhareva Center shows that there is high demand for such highly specialized institutions and that the basic principles laid down at its creation, urgency, stage, and continuity of care, poly-professionalism with a focus on non-drug treatment methods, orientation towards the patient’s family are relevant.

Keywords

child and adolescent psychiatry / suicidal behavior in children and adolescents / crisis states / crisis clinic / polyprofessional approach

References

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