Trauma as a Predictive Indicator of Clinical Outcome in Residential Treatment

The present study was conducted to identify predictors of residential treatment outcome for youth. Data were collected and analyzed on multiple variables including each subject's psychiatric diagnoses, previous treatment attempts and success or failure in these respective settings, length of stay in prior treatment settings, past psychiatric hospitalizations, medication usage, trauma history, short-term and long-term treatment goals, and presenting symptomatology at admission to residential treatment. For this sample, analysis of outcomes data indicated that exposure to a variety of types of trauma was the single greatest predictor of improvement or deterioration in residential treatment.