Possibilities and limits of psychiatric care in relation to pediatrics

Czech version

Authors: Jakub Kerner
Authors‘ workplace: Dětská psychiatrická klinika, 2. lékařská fakulta, Univerzita Karlova a FN Motol, Praha
Published in: Čes-slov Pediat 2025; 80 (2): 61-67.
Category: adolescent health
doi: https://doi.org/10.55095/CSPediatrie2025/007

Overview

Psychiatric care is a highly specialized care focused on the treatment of mental illnesses. Child psychiatry and pediatrics are closely connected and cooperating fields. Cooperation takes place both at the level of inpatient departments and outpatient clinics. In the pediatric department often contain patients after serious suicide attempts, including intoxications, with anorexia nervosa, with comorbid psychiatric and somatic diagnoses, or psychological decompensation due to somatic illness. In all these cases, it is important for the pediatrician to have the opportunity to consult with a consultant psychiatrist. Pediatricians frequently encounter psychiatric patients not only in inpatient care, but also in outpatient care. General practitioners for children and adolescents are in many cases the first doctors a child or adolescent sees. They should be able to recognize the symptoms of an incipient mental disorder in good time and direct the patient to psychiatric care. A general practitioner for children and adolescents is also authorized to prescribe certain medications, especially antidepressant and anxiolytic medications, and can thus immediately begin therapy for depressive or anxiety symptoms. This article will outline the options for treating the most common psychiatric illnesses, what a pediatrician can realistically expect from working with an outpatient or inpatient psychiatrist, where and when to refer the patient, and how to proceed with selected diagnoses (anorexia nervosa, depression, anxiety disorders, dissociative disorders, somatoform disorders, self-harm, suicide attempts, activity and attention disorders, or psychotic illnesses).

Keywords:

ADHD – Anxiety disorders – depression – anorexia nervosa – self-harm – dissociative disorders – somatoform disorders – psychotic illnesses

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