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Inappropriate admission of young people with mental disorder to adult psychiatric wards and paediatric wards: cross sectional study of six months' activity

Child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient wards were established because young people with mental illness are often poorly served by admission to general psychiatric wards owing to needs that differ from those adults, different skills needed by staff, and difficulty ensuring young people's safety.1 The admission of young people with mental illness to paediatric wards also raises concerns about safety and the skills of staff. We estimated the number of inappropriate admissions of young people with mental disorder to adult psychiatric wards and paediatric wards.

We chose nine health authorities representative of England and Wales in terms of location, population size, deprivation, and provision of child and adolescent psychiatric wards (see table on bmj.com). These health authorities served 1.13 million people aged under 18, representing 9% of the population of England and Wales (1999 projections of 1991 census).

We identified all adult psychiatric wards and paediatric wards. Consultant general psychiatrists and paediatricians completed a questionnaire for each eligible patient (patients aged under …