ArticleEuropean child & adolescent psychiatry2023
Informative value of referral letters from general practice for child and adolescent mental healthcare.
Article in European child & adolescent psychiatry, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Defining a theoretical framework for a quality referral at the primary-secondary care interface: a systematic scoping review with qualitative content analysis.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2026Article
- Stakeholder perspectives of mental healthcare services in Bangladesh, its challenges and opportunities: a qualitative study.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- Addressing the complexity of child psychiatry practice in the current landscape.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2023Article
- Article
- Reasons for admission and variance of body weight at referral in female inpatients with anorexia nervosa in Germany.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2021Article
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6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although referral letters (RLs) form a nodal point in a patient's care journey, little is known about their informative value in child and adolescent mental healthcare. To determine the informative value of RLs to child and adolescent psychiatry, we conducted a chart review in medical records of minors registered at specialized mental healthcare between January 2015 and December 2017 (The Netherlands). Symptoms indicated in RLs originating from general practice (N = 723) were coded and cross-tabulated with the best estimate clinical classifications made in psychiatry. Results revealed that over half of the minors in the sample were classified in concordance with at least one reason for referral. We found fair to excellent discriminative ability for indications made in RLs concerning the most common psychiatric classifications (95% CI AUC: 60.9-70.6 for anxiety disorders to 90.5-100.0 for eating disorders). Logistic regression analyses suggested no statistically significant effects of gender, age, severity or mental healthcare history, with the exception of age and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), as RLs better predicted ADHD with increasing age (OR = 1.14, 95% CI 1.03-1.27). Contextual problems, such as difficulties studying, problems with parents or being bullied were indicated frequently and associated with classifications in various disorder groups. To conclude, general practitioners' RLs showed informative value, contrary to common beliefs. Replication studies are needed to reliably incorporate RLs into the diagnostic work-up.
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