Evidence-based brief interventions targeting acute mental health presentations for children and adolescents: systematic review.

Background: Brief intervention services provide rapid, mobile and flexible short-term delivery of interventions to resolve mental health crises. These interventions may provide an alternative pathway to the emergency department or in-patient psychiatric services for children and young people (CYP), presenting with an acute mental health condition.

Aims: To synthesise evidence on the effectiveness of brief interventions in improving mental health outcomes for CYP (0-17 years) presenting with an acute mental health condition.

Method: A systematic literature search was conducted, and the studies' methodological quality was assessed. Five databases were searched for peer-reviewed articles between January 2000 and September 2022.

Results: We synthesised 30 articles on the effectiveness of brief interventions in the form of (a) crisis intervention, (b) integrated services, (c) group therapies, (d) individualised therapy, (e) parent-child dyadic therapy, (f) general services, (g) pharmacotherapy, (h) assessment services, (i) safety and risk planning and (j) in-hospital treatment, to improve outcomes for CYP with an acute mental health condition. Among included studies, one study was rated as providing a high level of evidence based on the National Health and Medical Research Council levels of evidence hierarchy scale, which was a crisis intervention showing a reduction in length of stay and return emergency department visits. Other studies, of moderate-quality evidence, described multimodal brief interventions that suggested beneficial effects.

Conclusions: This review provides evidence to substantiate the benefits of brief interventions, in different settings, to reduce the burden of in-patient hospital and readmission rates to the emergency department.