EDITORIALS |
Academic Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Imperial College London, St Marys Campus, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, UK. Email: e.garralda{at}imperial.ac.uk
Elena M. Garralda (pictured) is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Imperial College London. Her research interests include outcome measurement of child and adolescent mental health service use.
Outcome auditing of specialist child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) is now well under way internationally. There is, however, debate about objectives and tools. A case is made for the achievable goal of enhancing service accountability through user satisfaction information and clinician-rated contextualised measures of improvements in symptoms and impairment.