 |
Researchers in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine and colleagues at other institutions evaluated Project TEACH (PT), a statewide training and consultation program for pediatric primary care providers (PCPs) on identification and treatment of mental health conditions. The project is part of a collaboration between the REACH Institute (Resource for Advancing Children’s Health) and five academic departments of psychiatry. The curriculum consists of 15 hours of in-person training, a tool kit, and Web-based learning tools, along with a six-month distance learning program that includes 12 one-hour consultation calls with child psychiatrists.
Researchers compared an intervention group of 176 PCPs who volunteered for PT training with a stratified random sample of 200 PCPs who did not receive PT training. Data on prescription practices, diagnoses, and follow-up care were from New York State Medicaid files for youths seen by the trained and untrained PCPs. They found that the percentage of children prescribed psychotropic medication increased after PT training (from 9% to 12%), a larger increase than in the untrained group (from 4% to 5%).
“Our findings suggest potential benefits of training PCPs to identify and treat children’s mental health conditions," the researchers said. "Provider training and consultation may be a meaningful way to help reduce the number of children who do not receive treatment for mental health conditions, but further research is necessary to determine whether this type of model will be useful as the responsibility for mental health care and outcomes shifts under health care reform.”
For more about this program, see the Psychiatric News article, "New York Child Psychiatry Divisions Fill Gap in Collaborative Care Model."
(Image: Lisa F. Young/shutterstock.com)