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Feasibility, satisfaction, and goal attainment in routine telemedicine consultation in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy

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Abstract

Telehealth services were rapidly adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but evidence regarding the effectiveness and feasibility of telehealth services in child and adolescent mental healthcare is sparse. This study aims to investigate feasibility, satisfaction, and goal attainment in video-delivered consultations in routine care child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy. A total of 1046 patients from four university child and adolescent outpatient psychiatric clinics and one university outpatient unit for child and adolescent psychotherapy were screened for study participation. We examined a) the percentage of patients considered eligible for video-delivered consultation, b) clinicians’, parents’ and patients’ satisfaction with video consultation, c) clinicians’ ratings of goal attainment in video consultation, and d) factors associated with satisfaction and goal attainment. 59% of the screening sample (n = 621) fulfilled eligibility criteria and were considered eligible for video consultation. A total of 267 patients consented to participate in the study and received a video consultation. Clinicians reported high levels of satisfaction with video consultation and high levels of goal attainment in video consultations, especially for patients scheduled for initial patient assessments. Parents and patients were also highly satisfied with the video consultations, especially if patients had less severe emotional and behavioral problems. The present findings suggest that video consultations are a feasible and well-accepted alternative to in-person consultations in child and adolescent mental health care, especially for children with less severe symptoms and for children in early phases of assessment and treatment. Limitations include the lack of a control group. The study was registered at the German Clinical Trials Registry (DRKS00023525).

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Data availability

Data generated or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.

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Funding

This research was conducted as part of the collaborative research project egePan Unimed funded within the Network University Medicine by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, funding code: 01KX2021). The funding body has no role in the design of the study and the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, and in writing the manuscript. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

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Author notes

  1. Manfred Döpfner and Elena von Wirth contributed equally to this work and are shared first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Child and Adolescent Cognitive Behavior Therapy (AKiP), Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Manfred Döpfner, Julia Adam, Carolina Goldbeck & Karen Schulze-Husmann

  2. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Manfred Döpfner & Stephan Bender

  3. Department of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Trier, Trier, Germany

    Elena von Wirth

  4. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Beate Herpertz-Dahlmann & Michael Simons

  5. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Fabiola Heuer & Jan Schwendowius

  6. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Luise Poustka

  7. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Centre Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Christiane Wegner

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  1. Manfred Döpfner
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Contributions

MD and SB developed the initial study conception and design. Material preparation was performed by MD, JA and CG. All authors contributed to data collection. Data analysis was performed by EvW, MD, JA and CG. The first draft of the manuscript was written by EvW and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manfred Döpfner.

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Ethical approval

Ethical approval has been obtained for all study centers.

Informed consent

Verbal and written consent was obtained from children and parents/caregivers.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Döpfner, M., von Wirth, E., Adam, J. et al. Feasibility, satisfaction, and goal attainment in routine telemedicine consultation in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-024-02477-9

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