Characteristics of the population of a parent-child unit: early interaction-based treatment as a chance in child and adolescent psychiatry

Background In inpatient child psychiatric parent-child treatment, the child is admitted as a patient and the parents as accompanying persons. Due to the importance of parent-child interaction in the development and maintenance of mental disorders in children, parents are integrated more centrally in the treatment of children with emotional or behavioral disorders. In order to further expand this form of treatment in the future and to make it more effective, the characteristics of the previous utilization population of a child psychiatric parent-child unit in Tyrol were examined with regard to child symptomatology and the burden on parents. Methods The Child Behavior Checklist 1 1/2-5, Child Behavior Checklist 6-18R, and Troster's (2011) Parent Stress Inventory scores of 96 parent-child pairs were used to examine child symptom expression and parent stress. Results The 6-10 year old patients had higher T-scores (M = 76.9, SD = 7.1) than the 0-5 year old patients (M = 63.1, SD = 12.4) on the CBCL total scale, t (50) = -3.52, p < 0.001. On the EBI total scale, the 0-5 year old patients and the 6-10 year old patients did not differ in terms of T-scores, t (54) = -0.75, p = 0.459, as well as in the EBI child domain t (54) = -1.75, p = 0.087 and in the EBI parent domain, t (54) = 0.19, p = 0.846. Also, the four diagnostic groups did not differ in the EBI total scale, F (4,58) = 1.34, p = 0.266, nor in the parent domain of the EBI, F (4,58) = 1.44, p = 0.232, nor in the child domain of the EBI, F (4,58) = 2.81, p = 0.033. Conclusions Early identification and treatment of behavioral or mental disorders in very young children seems crucial to prevent long-term negative consequences as well as chronicity. Parent-child therapies should generally focus on identifying and changing current dysfunctional patterns of interaction between parent and child.