Observed Clinical and Health Services Outcomes in Pediatric Inpatients Treated with Atypical Antipsychotics: 1999–2003

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare clinical and health services outcomes in pediatric inpatients prescribed an atypical antipsychotic (AA) to those not prescribed an AA at discharge. Methods: Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and, where necessary, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used to compare differences between and within an inpatient group prescribed risperidone, olanzapine, or quetiapine (n = 1,131) with an inpatient group not prescribed an antipsychotic at discharge (n = 1,741). Results: The AA treatment group showed greater psychiatric symptom difficulty at admission as measured by the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale for Children (Mean BPRS-C) than the group not prescribed AAs (40.3 [n = 433] vs. 35.2 [n = 452], respectively, p < 0.001). AA-treated inpatients also had a higher number of mental health outpatient visits during the 6 months prior to admission. Patients receiving AAs (n = 1,050) had significantly longer adjusted length of stay (LOS) than those not r...