Financing mental health services for children and adolescents.

Proponents of extended hospitalization for the most seriously disturbed children and adolescents face increasing difficulty in obtaining funds for such expensive care. The author advocates a continuum-of-care system that will provide a spectrum of treatment modalities, and she notes that when costs are averaged for all children treated at various points on the continuum, the cost per child drops dramatically. She challenges mental health care professionals to justify their treatment effectiveness to payers (1) by developing creative treatment programs that will reduce costs and (2) by compiling research data to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of extended hospitalization for seriously disturbed children and adolescents.