Use of a Short-term Psychiatric Inpatient Model to Address Problem Behavior Exhibited by Youth with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities

ABSTRACT

Children with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) are more likely to have co-occurring mental health diagnoses and require hospitalization than their typically developing peers. Inpatient psychiatric treatment for this population can vary considerably and often include providers from numerous disciplines (e.g., psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers). We describe the results produced while treating this population of patients on a short-term inpatient and partial hospitalization psychiatric unit. By receiving multidisciplinary treatment from allied health professionals, including psychiatry, psychology, board-certified behavior analysts, and social work, we obtained an average reduction in problem behavior from admission to discharge from the psychiatric unit of 87.5%. Further statistical analysis of variables that may have contributed to this reduction in problem behavior did not show clear relations. That is, number of treatment sessions, number of medications, or behavioral function did not seem to differentially impact outcomes. This paper will describe the multidisciplinary treatment model and offer guidance to practitioners working with psychiatrically hospitalized youth with IDD.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Lyndsay Gaffey, Franklin Crandall, Aimee Alcorn, and the behavioral health specialists and nurses on the intensive services units for their assistance with aspects of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Compliance with ethical standards

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. IRB approval was granted by the institution’s Multiple Institutional Review Board. This article does not contain studies with animals performed by any of the authors.