A clinical and academic outcome study of children attending a day treatment program

To assess the behavioural and academic improvement of children who attended a day treatment program during a defined period of time.

Forty-six children admitted consecutively to the project were assessed on admission and discharge using behavioural and academic measures. They also had intelligence and language assessments. The subjects attended the program for one academic year, on the average. The large majority presented with disruptive behaviour disorders and low academic achievement levels.

There was a significant improvement reported by the parents in externalizing (P < 0.001) and internalizing (P < 0.05) behaviour. The subjects also gained one academic year, but their levels continued to be low in terms of percentiles. Measures of academic improvement showed significant associations with cognitive measures only (subscales of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised [WISC-R] and Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised [CELF-R]).

A day treatment and school program is an effective modality for treatment and remediation of children with severe psychiatric disorders. The academic underachievement may be resistant to remediation within the limited period of attendance in such a program.