Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Personality Structure

Completed

• Conditions: Personality Disorders; Social Withdrawal of Childhood or Adolescence; Psychosocial Impairment

• Registration Number: NCT05162287
• Lead Sponsor: Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf

Brief Summary

The study plan outlined here represents an investigation of instruments on the patients treated in the acute ward of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf (UKE). The psychosocial burden of the affected children and adolescents is evident due to the severity of the disorders leading to specific admission. The psychosocial burden can be defined as "psychological, social, or school-occupational functional impairment \[...\] that has arisen as a consequence of a mental disorder, a specific developmental disorder, or an intellectual impairment". The current research project aims to survey the severity of psychosocial distress, personality functioning impairment, and social withdrawal. A better knowledge of these factors may contribute to a more suitable, specialized treatment offer on the acute ward in the medium term.

Detailed Description

Children and adolescents who receive inpatient psychiatric treatment are counted among the most impaired in society. In addition to the usually very severe mental disorders, the patient:s often have psychosocial risk factors and traumatic life events in their history. As demand for psychiatric-psychotherapeutic care increases, many inpatient services have been driven to reduce costs, while parallel pressures to measure outcomes and effectiveness have increased. The call for evidence-based practice underscores the need to use valid and reliable measurement tools to capture changes in symptoms and functionality during short-term interventions and their effectiveness. Measuring this change allows for the evaluation of the interventions as a whole and identifying areas for improvement. Acute care units are a particular type of inpatient setting. The main goal of treatment is to stabilize the patient:s by reducing acute psychiatric symptoms, suicide risk, and danger to others. The challenge of care for this target group is to do justice to heterogeneous initial situations and offer customized help for each child and adolescent. The use of instruments to record psychosocial stress and personality disorders increases the chance that at least some of those affected can be prevented from developing a chronic course and thus long-term psychosocial impairment utilizing tailored interventions.

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2021-11-10
• Study Start: 2021-12-01
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-12-04
• Study First Posted: 2021-12-17
• Primary Completion: 2022-12-01
• Study Completion: 2022-12-05
• Status Verified: 2023-07
• Last Update Submitted: 2023-07-18
• Last Update Posted: 2023-07-19

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 62

Inclusion Criteria

Not provided

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Psychosocial distress	3 minutes	CGAS (Shaffer et al., 1983): adapted from the Global Assessment Scale for adults, the Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) assesses functioning aimed at children and adolescents aged 6-17 years. The child or adolescent receives a single score ranging from 1 to 100 based on a clinician's assessment of several aspects of the child's psychological and social functioning. The score can be placed in one of ten categories ranging from "extremely impaired" to "very good"

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Social withdrawal	2 minutes	3-item Loneliness Scale (Klein et al., 2021): Social withdrawal is also measured by the 3-item Loneliness Scale. The scale is an economic measure derived from the R-UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell et al., 1980) that captures basic aspects of loneliness: A sense of isolation, disconnectedness, and not belonging. Items are rated on 5-point Likert scales (0=never, 1=sometimes, 2=sometimes, 3=often, 4=very often). Responses are summed for a total score ranging from 0 to 12, with higher scores indicating higher levels of loneliness.
Level of personality functioning	10 minutes	LoPF-Q 12-18 (Goth et al., 2018b): The Levels of Personality Functioning 12-18 Questionnaire (LoPF-Q 12-18) instrument assesses self-report impairments in personality functioning in the four domains of identity, self-control, empathy, and closeness in children and adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18. The test allows a dimensional differentiation between healthy and impaired personality functions, which are associated with a high risk of an existing personality disorder.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf; 🇩🇪 Hamburg, Germany