The Name of the Room: Child Psychiatry and Economic Rationalism

Abstract

In many Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in Victoria, Australia, clinical staff are required to share offices and have access to only a limited number of de-personalized interview rooms to see their clients. The sharing of rooms with colleagues from the adult mental health services may have a traumatizing effect on the child patient. The author suggest that the reason of economic rationalism in child psychiatry is that of reducing the issues that are addressed to their purely functional or economic value. The discussion addresses the issues raised in child psychiatry by the reduced availability of a protected room. A room that is protected from transgressions from without as well as from within is able to function in the clinical setting as that which permits the recognition of the very rule that promotes the establishment of culture. The clinical encounter with the child, adolescent, and family is a form of social bond, through which the clinician and the patient both participate in society, something far beyond any conception that 'service provision' can encompass, not matter how 'enhanced.' (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)