Children’s Mental Health Hospital Rankings

Peking University Sixth Hospital, Beijing Anding Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, Institute of Mental Health of the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Shanghai Mental Health Center, and Nanjing Brain Hospital.

To be honest, I have been a medical social worker in the pediatric psychiatry department for 8 years. The most common question asked by parents is "Can you give a reliable ranking of hospitals?" Every time, I have to dispel everyone's obsession with "finding the best hospital based on the rankings and everything will be fine" - children's psychological problems are much more complex than ordinary physical diseases, and there is no way to rank them in a single dimension. For example, last year a parent from Hangzhou brought a child with suspected Asperger syndrome to a doctor. He initially looked at the list and went straight to Shanghai Jingwei. He queued for a special number for three weeks. After a 15-minute interview, he found out that the group beds for autism spectrum intervention there had been scheduled for half a year. Later, he went to Nanjing Brain Hospital, just in time to catch up with the newly opened Asperger intervention class in the Department of Child Development and Behavior. The child followed it for three months and was able to take the initiative to talk to the children in the community.

Why is there never an official special ranking? The essence is that the evaluation dimensions are too scattered, and there is still no unified scoring standard in the industry: some hospitals have strong scientific research capabilities and a very low misdiagnosis rate of rare cases, but there are few regular outpatient clinics, and it is difficult for ordinary families to get long-term follow-up clinics. ； Some hospitals have complete clinical intervention systems that cover the entire process from diagnosis to family intervention guidance, but their academic reputation is not high and it is difficult to be included in the comprehensive list. ； Some hospitals are good at dealing with emotional disorders and self-injury intervention for teenagers over 14 years old, but have less experience with developmental problems for children aged 3-6 years old. There is even a view in the industry that the top hospitals on the list are actually only suitable for the first diagnosis of difficult cases. If ordinary families really want long-term intervention, they might as well go to the pediatric department of the local public mental health center - after all, children's psychological treatment is a slow process. Cognitive behavioral therapy needs to be done once a week. It is impossible to fly from Kunming to Beijing every week, right? The cost of traveling on the road has a greater impact on the child's condition.

Oh, by the way, there is another pitfall that I must remind everyone: 90% of the rankings of children's psychology hospitals marked as "officially certified" and "authoritatively released" found online are advertisements placed by private institutions. I just met a parent from Hebei last month who was tricked by a search engine ranking into a private institution and spent more than 30,000 yuan on "brain wave repair treatment". The child was originally just an adolescent with adaptive depression, but after two months of delay, he developed self-harming behavior. Finally, he was sent to Beijing to stabilize his condition.

As for how to choose the right hospital, you really don’t have to focus on those comprehensive lists. It is more important to understand your child’s needs first: if the child has unexplained emotional abnormalities or developmental delays, and the local hospital cannot make a clear diagnosis, for example, if it is suspected to be a rare developmental disorder, refractory tics or early bipolar disorder, then go to the head hospitals mentioned above first. They see more cases in a year than many local hospitals have seen in ten years, and there is basically no misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis.； If the diagnosis has been made clearly, but only long-term adjustment of medication and psychological intervention is needed, then it is better to choose a doctor who is close to home and can follow up regularly, even if it is a local public tertiary hospital, it will be better than traveling thousands of miles to see a specialist once and then leaving.

There has been debate in the industry as to whether the pediatric department of a specialized mental health hospital is better, or the developmental behavioral department of the pediatric department of a general hospital. In fact, each has its own advantages: Doctors at psychiatric hospitals have a stronger ability to identify mental symptoms and can accurately distinguish whether a child's aversion to school is a simple emotional problem caused by academic pressure or an early manifestation of bipolar disorder. ； The Developmental Behavior Department of a general hospital is better at handling co-morbid physical problems, such as tics accompanied by epilepsy, and developmental delay accompanied by congenital underlying diseases. They can directly link up consultations with departments such as pediatrics and neurology, eliminating the need for parents to travel to several hospitals for transfers.

There is another special situation that many parents will ignore: If the child is already in a critical state of self-injury or suicidal tendencies, regardless of the ranking, go directly to the nearest public tertiary hospital with children's psychological emergency department and resolve the crisis first. No matter how high-ranking the hospital is, if you wait two or three months to register, you will not be able to keep up with the changes in the child's condition. If you really want to find a reference, it is better to go to the children's department of the local public mental health center for a preliminary screening. If you encounter difficult problems that you are not sure about, then ask the doctor to help refer you to a higher-level hospital with stronger corresponding directions. It is much more reliable than blindly looking at the rankings of unknown origins.