Follow-up Care Within 7 Days of Psychiatric Hospital Discharge Reduces Suicide Risk in Youth

Youth on Medicaid who have a follow-up mental health visit within seven days of discharge from a psychiatric hospital appear to be at lower risk of suicide in the six months following hospitalization compared with those who do not receive such timely care, reports astudy published today inJAMA Network Open.“High rates of suicide after psychiatric hospital discharge have persisted and failed to decrease for decades,” wrote Cynthia A. Fontanella, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and colleagues. “These findings support e xisting quality indicators and highlight the need to improve transitions from inpatient to outpatient mental health care.”Fontanella and colleagues analyzed Medicaid claims data from 33 states on youth aged 10 years to 18 years who had been admitted to psychiatric hospitals between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2013. (These states were selected because of the quality and completeness of the managed care claims, the authors noted.) The researchers specifically focused on youth who had inpatient admissions of 1 to 30 days, were discharged home, and were continuously enrolled in Medicaid during the 180 days before the admission and the 30 days after hospital discharge.To determine deaths by suicide within eight to 180 days of discharge, the researchers linked the Medicaid data with data from the National Death Index. They defined an outpatient mental health visit as “any Me...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: adolescent suicide Cynthia Fontanella David Brent follow-up care inpatient hospitalization JAMA Network Open Medicaid outpatient care youth Source Type: research