Risk Factors for Revolving Door in Children and Adolescents with Psychiatric Disorders

Revolving Door (RD) is a frequent phenomenon afflicting children and adolescents with psychiatric diagnoses. Nevertheless, risk factors for RD are still a matter of debate. To better understand RD phenomenon, we conducted a retrospective study on 224 children and adolescents (165 females and 59 males, aged 6–16 years) with a psychiatric hospitalization, taking the multiple risk factors together. At this aim, 108 patients with multiple hospitalizations and 116 patients with only one hospitalization were compared on demographic characteristics, clinical conditions, psychiatric ward stay, and post-discharge management factors. More than half of psychiatric patients were readmitted within three months of discharge. RD patients presented greater severity of illness, needed longer stays, and were more frequently placed in residential facilities than non-RD patients. Non-suicidal self-injurious and adoption were the main predictors of RD. Clinical instruments that detected behavioural and emotional symptoms, suicidal ideation severity, and level of impairment of the person’s functioning were useful to identify patients at high risk for RD. In conclusion, our findings pointed out that several risk factors have to be considered to better understand and, in the future, prevent RD phenomenon.