Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Around 20% of young people experience significant depression during adolescence
This can have serious effects in school performance, social relations and self-confidence.Did you also know that the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) also provides specialist programs to the wider community including a school refusal clinic (known since 1997 as PASS or Promoting Attendance and School Success)?
It is open to young people between the ages of 7 and 14.5 years of age who are experiencing significant school attendance problems due to truanting or “wagging” from school.
Young people can be referred to the program by their schools, private practitioners and other agencies. CAMHS began life in 1972 as the Division of Family Psychiatry consisting of Departments of Adult and Child Psychiatry at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital.
Originally headed by Dr David Mushin, the service at that time was largely oriented to referrals from within the hospital. Once it moved to Monash Medical Centre Clayton in 1987, the Department of Child Psychiatry, as it was still known then, took on major outpatient and community responsibilities in the region.
One such responsibility included the assignment of child psychiatry services to the Dandenong Child Guidance Clinic. From its new location, the department also developed inpatient child psychiatry services. CAMHS, currently headed by Dr Paul Lee, also provides early intervention for severely psychiatrically disturbed adolescents.