Psychiatric Residential Treatment Centers for Children and Adolescents: Modeling Variation in Facility Definition Type

Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorder Bed Capacity, Need, and Shortage Estimates in Sacramento County, California

“…32 These estimates also correspond with findings from similar exercises, both within the United States and internationally. 33 Estimates for child/adolescent psychiatric beds, 34 as well as SUD treatment beds, are less common. 35 3.…”

“…69 For child/adolescent community residential treatment facility beds, we selected a reference estimate of 44.3 residential treatment facility beds per 100,000 children/adolescents (Table 6, estimate 3) based on a 2017 review by Lynch and colleagues. 70 The authors produced estimates of residential treatment facilities for children/adolescents throughout the United States, using National Mental Health Services Survey data, and they concluded that the United States has 7.0 beds per 1,000 children/adolescents with serious emotional disturbances (SEDs). Based on a background prevalence estimate that 6.4 percent of children/adolescents in the United States have an SED, 71 this would translate to 44.3 beds per 100,000 children/adolescents overall.…”

Variation in Evidence-Based Practices Among Youth-Serving Residential Treatment Facilities

“…Organizational factors were selected based on the availability in the N-MHSS data set and previous literature that supports that these organizational factors capture the variability in RT facilities across the country. Lynch and colleagues (2017) analyzed data from the 2012 N-MHSS to model the variation in RT facilities, finding that the geographic distribution of RT facilities was relatively homogeneous (i.e., most located in the southern region of the United States); Lynch et al, 2017). While most facilities were operated by private, non-profit organizations and the geographic distribution of facilities were similar, the majority (64%) of facilities in the United States define themselves as facilities that served children under the age of 18 with emotional and behavioral challenges but did not include inpatient care or adults (Lynch et al, 2017).…”

“…Lynch and colleagues (2017) analyzed data from the 2012 N-MHSS to model the variation in RT facilities, finding that the geographic distribution of RT facilities was relatively homogeneous (i.e., most located in the southern region of the United States); Lynch et al, 2017). While most facilities were operated by private, non-profit organizations and the geographic distribution of facilities were similar, the majority (64%) of facilities in the United States define themselves as facilities that served children under the age of 18 with emotional and behavioral challenges but did not include inpatient care or adults (Lynch et al, 2017). This finding contrasted with a study by Brown and colleagues (2010), who surveyed three states, finding that states varied widely in RT facilities’ function.…”

“…Over time, the number of new RT facilities has decreased, while the proportion of facilities that have operated for 50 years or longer continues to grow (Sternberg et al, 2013). Facility capacity has been challenging to measure because of the ambiguity in the RT definition resulting in inpatient beds, which is distinctly different from RT, being counted in the number of RT beds nationally (Geller & Biebel, 2006; Lynch et al, 2017). In the present study, we elected to examine admissions per year instead of bed count to elucidate how EBPs are distributed by facility size.…”