Research will investigate the effects of combining body and mind treatment among children and young people

An increasing number of children and adolescents are seeking psychiatric care due to mental health disorders.

Many of these children also suffer from physical illnesses, and conversely, mental health problems often arise among children and young people diagnosed with a severe chronic disease.

Therefore, psychiatric care in the Danish regions will be merged with somatic care. Somatics is derived from Greek and means 'relating to the body'.

The merger was first decided in the North Denmark Region, with the other regions set to follow in 2026.

This follows the 'Agreement on a 10-year plan for psychiatry and mental health', which the parties in the Danish Parliament at Christiansborg agreed to in 2022.

Statistics is key to provide a clear picture

The question is what benefit the merger will have, especially for children and young people. A new research project will investigate this with support from Independent Research Fund Denmark.

»The project identifies children and young people with somatic diseases, psychiatric diseases, and also the patients in contact with both systems. This merger is particularly important for these patients. Because in the future, they will be treated within one unified system, where the specialties and sectors are supposed to collaborate more closely,« explains Andreas Jensen, who will be in charge of the research, and continues:

»Children with ADHD, for example, are treated within psychiatry, while children with asthma receive care within the somatic system. Now the two systems will be integrated, and it is a major administrative and clinical task to plan and implement this change.«

Andreas Jensen is a senior researcher at Mary Elizabeth's Hospital’s Data Powerhouse (Danish: Center for Data og Effektforskning) at Rigshospitalet. He is a statistician, and the research will be based on a wide range of register data.

The register data that will be included in the project cover everything from the number of readmissions to data on well-being at school and socio-economic factors.

»Another key focus of this study is the context of patient pathways. Currently, there is no consensus on how to define coherence in a patient pathway and how to measure it quantitatively. So, the project will help define what constitutes coherence in patient pathways. Then, we can measure it by examining the coherence in patient pathways before the reform, when somatic and psychiatric systems were separated, and comparing it to the period after the merger,« says Andreas Jensen.

Hoping to show concrete improvements

He is pleased that the project will run for five years with planned completion in the spring of 2031. By then, almost ten years will have passed since the 10-year plan for psychiatry was adopted.

»I hope we will see measurable improvements for children and young people, so that they have fewer days of contact with the health system, that they thrive better, and that we will see fewer suicide attempts. I also hope there will be less resource consumption at hospitals, while at the same time patients experience increased coherence in their treatment,« says Andreas Jensen.

The senior researcher emphasizes the need for objective data and analysis in evaluating health reforms. The analyses will assess whether the reform has been effective, so that this knowledge can be used in the planning of future initiatives.

»I greatly respect qualitative assessments of how the systems work. But without concrete data showing the difference before and after, it is difficult to know whether the changes have been effective and whether they will benefit the patients,« concludes Andreas Jensen.