Factors affecting compliance with treatment in an outpatient child psychiatric practice: A retrospective study in a community mental health centre in Athens.

Background: The literature review shows that treatment compliance in child psychiatric practice is a multifactorial issue that includes parameters such as the type of problem presented by the child, the family's functioning and the therapeutic team's organization and functioning.

Methods: In order to examine these parameters and their inter-relationship, epidemiological data from the files of 455 cases, representing the total number of cases admitted to our Centre between 1990-1994, were collected. We noted that the majority of patients (58.6%) failed to comply with treatment.

Results: The statistical analysis shows that the sex and age of the child, the socio-economic status of the family, the family's size, the parents' educational background as well as the referral source are unrelated to compliance. On the contrary, the type of problem presented by the child, the type of recommended treatment, the number of sessions attended and the season of admission are correlated with treatment compliance.

Conclusions: Certain aspects of our team's techniques concerning the admission procedure, therapeutic contract and parental counselling have been re-examined and improved.