Adolescents' Mental Health Service Use and Provider, Process, and Recipient Characteristics

We studied 505 successive contacts to an adolescent outpatient clinic to evaluate (a) how client, referral process, service process, and provider characteristics related to outcome indicators, return after the first visit, the distance in the clinic's process clients proceeded and (b) how many sessions clients were seen. Few client characteristics or referral process variables and none of the provider characteristics were related to status on any outcome measure. The primary association was between service process characteristics and adolescents' use of clinical services, with inclusion of other family members and the presence of a single-service provider throughout the contact being most crucial.