Symptoms Improve for Inpatient Adolescents According to Measurement-Based Care

Objective: Use measurement-based care to assess symptom change across diagnostic categories for adolescents receiving acute-care psychiatric inpatient treatment including both psychopharmacology and dialectical behavior therapy. Methods: Adolescents were aged 12–17 and hospitalized on a coeducational, acute-care inpatient unit within a psychiatric hospital in New York City. We conducted a retrospective chart review to analyze symptoms across two or more timepoints from the first 15 days of admission using mixed effects regression models to estimate linear change on five outcome measures including Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), General Behavior Inventory-Mania subscale (GBI-10M), Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Prodromal Questionnaire Brief-21 (PQB-21), and Schwartz Outcome Scale-10 (SOS-10). Results: There were improvements on all five measures. For the GAD-7, GBI-10M, PHQ-9, and PQB-21, the change is negative, indicating a decrease in symptoms. For the SOS-10, the change is positive, suggesting an increase in well-being. The covariance parameters indicate that there is generally significant individual variation around the adolescent’s initial assessment as well as significant individual variation around the slope, suggesting that patients change at different rates. The Days × Intercept covariance parameter is generally negative, indicating that adolescents who started with higher symptom severity showed greater symptom reduction. For well-being, the negative change indicates that adolescents with higher well-being on the first assessment showed smaller increases in well-being over time. Conclusion: Adolescents experienced improvements in their symptoms of anxiety, mania, depression, psychosis, and well-being during acute psychiatric inpatient treatment. These are notable findings, particularly for demonstrating the impact of psychiatric inpatient treatment on improving symptoms/diagnoses.