Die Bedeutung struktureller Rahmenbedingungen für Kinder- und Jugendliche mit psychischen Erkrankungen: Eine Untersuchung im Rahmen von stationärer Rehabilitation während der Corona-Pandemie

In March 2018, the first Austrian rehabilitation clinic for children and adolescents with disorders from the field of “Mental Health” opened in Wildbad, Styria. On the part of the Austrian Health Insurance (ÖGK), this term subsumes diagnoses from children and adolescents’ psychiatrics, developmental and social pediatrics, and psychosomatics. After the lockdown caused by COVID-19, there was a clear excess of assignments from the children and adolescents’ psychiatric spectrum. Therefore, it was decided to specialize, which made treatment planning much easier. This specialization also restricted the age group, so that we primarily treated patients between the ages of 12 and 18 years. Because of the homogenization, we noticed that the patients tended to be able to end their stay more satisfied and more mentally stable. Therefore, we asked ourselves what the cause of this supposedly positive effect was. We developed a questionnaire in order to be able to query and compare the most important points in our experience. At the beginning of the stay, self-motivation, subjectively perceived restrictions due to the illness, and own rehabilitation goals were queried. At the end of the stay, we tried to present a differentiated assessment of symptom improvement and the resulting effects on everyday life.