Mental health problems among children and adolescents are a matter of social concern in Japan, and we have been carrying out both clinical and research activities in these area. The Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry was newly and independently set up in 2009 in Kyushu University Hospital. Since then, we have been expanding and collaborating with other sections and departments in Kyushu University to provide a more integrated clinical service.
As for clinical services, we have three major disciplines. Firstly, we recruit a wide range ages of children in terms of “lifecycle psychiatry”, which covers the range from pregnancy/foetus and perinatal /neonatale periods, the infant period, preschool and school age periods to adolescence. Then the young people would become parents of the next generation.
Secondly, we focus on not only children but also on parents, so that we can assess and treat them as a family unit.
Thirdly, we see the family as a team which consists of staff from three major departments; child psychiatrists and clinical psychologists from our departments, child neurologists, neonatologists and clinical psychologists from the department of Paediatrics and midwives and obstetricians from the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, which carry out regular meetings for case references and other studies.
Beyond our university hospital, we also collaborate with psychologists from the Department of Clinical Psychology and Community Studies, Graduate School of Human Environmental Studies, Kyushu University. Outside the University, we provide specialist’ supervisions for child guidance clinics, training centres and local mental hospitals. With the staff mentioned we deal with patients with postnatal depression, mother-infant relationship problems, pervasive developmental disorders and hyperkinetic attention deficit disorders, anxiety and depressive disorders and psychotic disorders.
From research point of view, we collaborate with the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Kings College and University of London and the Maudsley hospital in the UK to develop education and training system for Japanese trainees. One of our unique clinical strengths is perinatal psychiatry. Treating perinatal depression is based on the longstanding collaboration with the staff in the Section of Perinatal Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings college and University of London, as well as due to collaboration with the Life Span Research Group, Royal Holloway, University of London.
For researchers, contact details are as follows:
Keiko Yoshida, MD PhD
Professor
Department of Child Psychiatry, Kyushu University Hospital
3-1-1, Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, 812-8582, Japan
Fax +81-92-642-5644, mail keikoy@npsych.med.kyush-u.ac.jp
