Evaluation of psychiatric emergencies of children and adolescents in a university hospital

Objective: In this study, we aimed to evaluate the reasons of application, sociodemographic properties and diagnoses of patients admitted to Ege University Faculty of Medicine Children’s Hospital Emergency Department, with psychiatric symptoms.

Method: The records of 215 patients, admitted to Ege University Faculty of Medicine Children’s Hospital Emergency Department and consulted by Child and Adolescent Psychiatry between May 2010 and October 2013 were evaluated. The data was evaluated using SPSS 16.0 program.

Results: The majority (73.9%) of the patients was female and the mean age of the subjects was 14.74±2.41. It was found that 45.1% (n=97) of the patients applied with suicide attempt, 20.9% (n=45) with aggressive symptoms, 18.6% (n=40) with anxiety and depressive symptoms, 5.1% (n=11) with psychotic symptoms, 5.1% (n=4) with substance and alcohol use, 4.2% (n=9) with spasms and myalgia, 0.9% (n=2) with child abuse impeachment. The patients’ psychiatric diagnoses, their follow-up results were also evaluated.

Conclusion: Our result demonstrating that the majority of the patients was female, is consistent with European studies. While a Canadian study states the most frequent reason of psychiatric emergency admission to be substance abuse (41%), we found in our study that the most frequent admission reason was suicide attempt (45.1%). Socio-cultural variations could be the cause of this difference. European and American data indicate that the number of cases admitted to pediatric emergency services with psychiatric symptoms increase every year. Studies in this subject are limited in our country. Future studies in this area are considered helpful in order to evaluate and manage the child and adolescent cases presenting with psychiatric emergencies.