Michael Rutter Centre for Children and Adolescents

The Michael Rutter Centre for Children and Adolescents is based at the Maudsley Hospital, a psychiatric hospital run by the National Health Service NHS.

It is an outpatient service for children and young adults with mental health issues such as anorexia, named after Professor Sir Michael Rutter, and has an international reputation for providing a range of specialist treatments and services that include art therapy rooms, psychology assessment rooms and video observation suites, where clinicians can work together in assessing and deciding treatment for individual cases. Facilities also include:

• Anxiety Disorders Clinic
• Conduct Problems Clinic
• Forensic Service for Young People
• Child Traumatic Stress Clinic
• Learning Disabilities Clinic
• Autism and Related Disorders Service
• Adoption and Fostering Clinic
• Neuropsychiatry Clinic
• Adolescent eating disorders service
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder clinic

The centre is famous for it's debatable research into the possibility that cats can develop a feline form of Alzheimer's disease, say U.K. and U.S. researchers who identified a protein that can build up in brain nerve cells and cause mental deterioration.

In 1994 it was estimated that at least 10% of children suffering from mental health problems required specialist facilities, but only 1-1.5% of children were being referred. (Garralda, M.E. 1994)^[1]. Parry-Jones described Child Mental Health Services as the 'Cinderella Service' (Parry-Jones, W. 1992)^[2]. The Michael Rutter Centre for Children and Adolescents is the latest in a long line of innovations established by the Maudsley Hospital specializing in the treatment of youngsters with mental health issues.

References

1. ^ Garralda, M.E. (1994) (3rd Edition) Primary Care Psychiatry. In: M. Rutter, E. Taylor and L. Herson (Eds) Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: Modern Approaches. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.
2. ^ Parry-Jones, W. (1992) Management in the National Health Service in Relation to Children and the Provision of Child Psychiatric Services. ACPP Newsletter, 14(1):3-8.

• International reputation for specialist child and adolescent mental health services
• Contribution to research and development

External links

• South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
• Middlesex University's mental health history timeline
• Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London
• The National and Specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services within the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust