Characteristics of children with medico-psychosocial suffering and the dedicated intervention

A growing number of children and adolescents hospitalized in paediatric services are part of complex family functioning characterized by the increasing number of psychosocial risk factors. This observation leads paediatric services to acknowledge the medico-psychosocial suffering of patients, and to promote the development of new intervention strategies.
The aim of this study is to identify the characteristics of children in paediatric care for medico-psychosocial reasons and the dedicated intervention: 104 files opened between 2015 and 2017 in a paediatric service were selected on a quota sampling based on the gender and age of patients. These children are mainly girls (n=68) aged between 1 month and 22 years old (M=9; SD=5) and from families experiencing from 0 to 12 vulnerability factors (M=5; SD=3). This intervention carried out in hospital lasts between 1 and 158 days (M=28; SD=32), includes from 0 to 298 observations (M=62; SD= 61), from 0 to 38 formal interviews (M=10; SD= 8) with the patient and/or his/her family, and telephone contacts up to 31 per case (M=5; SD=5). The analyses contributed to the development of a typology based on four sources of bio-psychosocial suffering: ill-treatment, at-risk family context, internalized disorders and externalized disorders.