Assessment of mental health presentations to the paediatric emergency department: a poorly standardised process

Children and young people (CYP) frequently present to paediatric emergency departments (PEDs) in mental health (MH) crises.1 Suicide is one of the leading UK causes of CYP death, while the prevalence of MH issues rose from 10.8% to 16% in 7–16 years old between 2017 and 2020.1 An accurate, objective and standardised assessment is crucial to stratify risk and facilitate timely, effective and individualised treatment. Recent National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance discourages the use of rapid assessment matrices (RAMs), increasing reliance on individual clinician expertise.2 We aimed to evaluate MH assessment variability among health care professinoals. Fifty-four staff participated in a tertiary PED seeing 1222 MH presentations annually. Six MH presentations were randomly selected from a 1-month sample generated by searching final diagnosis codes related to MH. They were anonymised and turned into video vignettes using student role-players. Consenting...
Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: PostScript Source Type: research