Child Fellow Research

What do patients expect, require, and desire: a qualitative study of hospitalized psychiatric patients’ from psychiatric services and treatment

Objective: This study is designed to explore psychiatric patients’ expectations, requirements, desires, and satisfaction from inpatient psychiatric services during the course of their hospitalization.

Background: Psychiatrists today utilize innovative psycho-pharmaceutical approaches to correct chemical imbalances believed to be the cause of mental illness. With this biomedical view of mental disorders, psychiatrists often forget or tend to ignore the patients’ view of their illness and what they think could be helpful to them. Patients’ expectations and requests are central to most theories of patient satisfaction and is one important dimension for empirical analysis of health policy issues; therefore, understanding and fulfilling the patients’ needs is a cornerstone of the health care system.

Design: This is a cross-sectional study using qualitative interviews of hospitalized psychiatric patients (15 to 18 psychiatric patients).

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS): mental health provider’s knowledge and perceptions about the utilization of rTMS in adolescents with treatment-resistant depression

Background:. TMS is a non-invasive clinical procedure where a current is passed through an insulated coil to create a brief magnetic pulse for cortical stimulation. This magnetic field penetrates the scalp and skull producing electrical currents in the underlying cortical tissue. It has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of MDD in adults who have not achieved satisfactory improvement from at least one prior adequate trial of an antidepressant. Research has indicated that rTMS is a safe, well-tolerated treatment which may be an effective in managing treatment resistant depression in adults. There currently is minimal literature discussing the use of rTMS in the adolescent population.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions and knowledge of medical and mental health professionals specializing in the treatment of children and adolescents regarding the use of rTMS for treatment-resistant depression in the adolescent population.  In doing so, the study aims to encourage discussion and further research into the use of rTMS in the adolescent population as an additional treatment intervention for patients facing these chronic mental health problems.

Design: This study is a cross-sectional, non-experimental survey design. The online survey will be distributed to the program directors at the child and adolescent psychiatry residency/fellowship programs in Illinois, who will be asked to forward the survey to faculty members, fellows, residents, and clinical psychologists within their departments. N~126.