Malpractice in child and adolescent psychiatry

Child and adolescent psychiatrists' anxiety about being sued for malpractice is a relatively recent phenomenon. When Bellamy surveyed all psychiatric malpractice appellate cases in the United States in the 15 years after World War 11 [1], he could identify only 18 cases, none of which involved child or adolescent patients. Studies of malpractice in the 1970s [2,3] suggested that child and adolescent patients were involved in less than 5% of all psychiatric malpractice claims and that psychiatrists as a whole represented only 0.3% of claims against all physicians. There was a rapid rise in malpractice insurance premiums in the 1970s and 1980s, but scant data remain in the literature about how actual malpractice risks for child and adolescent psychiatrists have changed. This article presents new estimates regarding the incidence and types of malpractice claims that involve child and adolescent patients and the nature of cases in which therapists of children are involved.