Against the backdrop of increasing evaluation requirements relating to medical and therapeutic treatment programmes, this literature overview concerns the area of child and adolescent psychiatry. The importance of this issue derives from the fact that there is only little evaluation research concerning child and adolescent psychiatry. Furthermore, treatment programmes for mentally impaired children and young people also pursue the goal to prevent or at least mitigate mental problems in the adulthood as far as possible. Hence, evaluations in this field also contribute to the quality assurance and the sustainability of treatments for this particular target group.

Basically, this analysis deals with “global assessments“ of therapies and it does not focus on special disorders children and adolescents may suffer from. This report refers to evaluation dimensions, indicators and instruments that have been internationally documented and applied. The “therapeutic outcome”, the “treatment satisfaction” and questions on “quality of life” represent core aspects of evaluation processes. The “clinical symptomatology” is a major indicator for the identification and the scope of the principal “therapeutic outcome”. Indicators clarifying the “treatment satisfaction” and “quality of life” issues involve quality measurements describing the treatment process, the willingness to co-operate and the communication culture amongst actors (patients; parents; medical and therapeutic staff). In regards to evaluation instruments for testing the proposed indicators, numerous tools have been identified and described in detail in this report. Health economic evaluations of child and adolescent psychiatry will be discussed in a separate LBI:HTA report.