Child & Adolescent

Psychiatry & Psychology

The Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology provides an array of clinical services though efforts of seven child and adolescent psychiatrists, three child and adolescent psychologists, 10 advanced trainees in fields of child and adolescent psychology and child and adolescent psychiatry, and eight clinicians who are on the staff of the University of Louisville Physicians-Bingham Clinic. These services cover a broad range of clinical disorders, provide a continuum of care for the community and serve as a local and regional resource for the most complex psychiatric problems of children and adolescents.

The Kosair Children’s Hospital Emergency Room is the primary receiving facility for acute child and adolescent psychiatric emergencies. The division provides 24-hour coverage for this service, including face to face consultations throughout the week and emergency consultations on the weekend. The service evaluates approximately 800-1,000 children per year.

The Ackerly Child Inpatient Unit

The 20-bed Ackerly Child Inpatient Unit at Kosair Children’s Hospital provides intensive diagnostic and treatment services for severely disturbed children and adolescents. These services include psychiatric and psychological evaluation, individual, group and family therapies and educational evaluations. Many children require medical evaluations in the coordination of psychiatric treatment; this is provided by consultants from the Kosair Children’s Hospital. Hospitalizations are as brief as possible and discharge planning is initiated at the time of admission to allow the most appropriate follow up care to be provided. Ackerly has become a regional referral center with an excellent reputation.

Outpatient Care at Bingham Clinic

The Bingham Clinic has been in existence since 1913 and is one of the oldest child guidance centers in the country.  For over two generations,the clinic has served patients and families in the Louisville area, and is a vital part of the activities in the Department of Pediatrics of the University of Louisville School of Medicine.

The clinic provides outpatient psychiatric services for local children and for children throughout the region. These services include careful psychiatric and psychological evaluation and treatments, including pharmacotherapy, individual psychotherapy, family therapy, and education.

Unique aspects of outpatient services include: evaluation and coordination of care of autistic children; evaluation of children who set fires; treatments for children with chronic illness; assessment and treatment of adolescent females with sexual behavior problems; and specialized family consultations.

Consultation Liaison Services

The division provides active consultation-liaison services to the pediatric wards of Kosair Children’s Hospital. Helping children of families cope with illness, hospitalization, and the effects of trauma as well as acute sequelae of self-injurious behaviors are the most common interventions provided.  Unique services provided include clinical biofeedback training, the Kosair Coping Cart and associated website (www.copingclub.com), psychiatric psychopharmacological consultation, among others.  The Consultation Team includes the attending chief of the service (pediatric psychologist), an attending child and adolescent psychiatrist, and consulting trainees in both pediatric psychology and psychiatry.

This program also provides specialty consultation services to the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic, and has further plans to expand into covering special clinic services relevant to other chronic pediatric conditions.  After hospital discharge, appropriate patients are referred to local and regional community resources, to the Pediatric CL Short-Term Aftercare Consultation Clinic (STACC), and a manualized treatment program for adolescents with chronic painful and fatiguing illnesses (CHIRP; Children's Health & Illness Recovery Program; www.louisville.edu/chirp).  The service evaluates and treats approximately 550 newly referred pediatric patients per year.