A comparison of staff and patient perceptions of a child and adolescent psychosomatic unit and a pediatric unit

Abstract

Social planning is frequently considered to be a vital part of designing psychiatric treatment programs. The authors were interested in the differential effects of social planning on a child psychosomatic unit and a pediatric unit. It was postulated that according to the staff and patients the psychosomatic and the pediatric units would be perceived to have very different characteristics. It was also postulated that the perceptions of the psychosomatic unit's staff and patients would have significantly greater cohesiveness than on the pediatric unit. The Ward Atmosphere Scale was revised for use with children and administered to staff and patients. The perceptions of the two wards were found to have important quantitative and qualitative differences, primarily in the area of psychiatric treatment (support, personal problem orientation, and anger and aggression). The psychosomatic unit's staff and patients showed the greatest disparity in perceptions due presumably to the patients' young age, relative lack of experience with a psychiatric treatment milieu, and degree of psychopathology. The psychosomatic staff showed substantially greater cohesiveness in their perceptions of the ward than the pediatric staff, possibly due, in the authors' opinion, to the environmental press created by the explicit ongoing social planning of the psychosomatic unit.