Evaluation of prioritization methods in child mental health services

Aim: This study aims to evaluate prioritization methods in patients who consult child and adolescent psychiatry clinics.Method: Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL), and Youth Self Report (YSR) forms were filled out by 900 patients of age 5 to 18 and/or their parents. After triage assessments, the attending clinician filled out Children's Mental Health Priority Criteria Tool (CMHPCT) and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Scales scores of the patients in need of an urgent appointment as identified through the triage were compared with those of non-urgent ones.Results: When compared with the non-urgent ones (n=649), the CBCL and YSR problem scores and SDQ scores of the urgent patients (n=251) were found to be significantly higher, while all the CBCL and YSR competence scores except CBCL school competence score were found to be significantly lower. A very high positive correlation was determined between the CMHPCT and VAS scores of the patients in the study, while a significant moderate correlation was found between CMHPCT and VAS scores and SDQ, CBCL, and YSR scores. CMHPCT and VAS scores were found moderately consistent with clinician categorizations at different cut-off points. CMHPCT and VAS scores have high predictive power on categorization of cases as urgent.Conclusion: It was concluded that CMHPCT may support clinical assessments as an objective assessment method.Keywords: Child and adolescent psychiatry, Priority evaluation, Visual Analogue Scale