Mental health

We participate in the following hospital programmes:

• Functional care unit for sexually abused minors.
• Haematology/Oncology, TBI and Nephrology.  
• PKU, cochlear implant and microtia.
• Endocrinology.
• Psychological and psychiatric maternity support (women's care).
• Chronic care.

SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital has a unit, called UTTCA-Minerva, which offers an intensive and comprehensive response to the most serious and complex cases of eating disorders (ED) in children and adolescents under 18 years of age who have not been able to be stabilised, even if they have been treated for more than a year in total or partial hospitalisation.

This unit of the Mental Health Area of the Hospital provides for the admission of the family and the patient in a flat close to the centre. It has the capacity to simultaneously attend 20 patients and the approximate duration of treatment is four months. The UTTCA-Minerva covers the whole of Catalonia and is included in the Plan for the Improvement of Care for People with Eating Disorders, presented by the Department of Health of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Eating disorders have become one of the most prevalent disorders in mental health centres. They affect between 5 and 8% of the adolescent and young adult population, mostly girls. In one out of every two cases, they manifest themselves before the age of 14 and 20-30% evolve towards chronicity.

Why SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital?

The UTTCA-Minerva of high complexity for children and adolescents, created at SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital, offers:

• Reducing the period of hospitalisation of these girls and moving the treatment to their natural environment to increase the guarantees of success and avoid the chronicity of the disease.
• The implementation of an intensive treatment programme that gives the family a key support role, empowering them and giving them the tools to cope with the disease.
• A team of professionals from different disciplines who assess the complexity of each case, make a differential diagnosis and design the treatment plan.
• A monitoring system that allows us to know at all times, and in real time, the evolution of all patients being treated in the unit.

Intensive treatment in four phases

The UTTCA-Minerva provides treatment that includes intensive therapeutic actions in the family environment and in the patient's natural environment. It includes four phases with a therapeutic care plan that progressively decreases until the patient is linked to the reference ED devices in their territory.

1. Hospitalisation of the patient. The patient is admitted to the hospital in a specially equipped space with four rooms (three doubles and one single), two multi-purpose rooms and a quiet area. During this admission, which is expected to last an average of 30 days, the professionals work to get the patient back to a healthy eating pattern. Empowerment of the family is also initiated through the ‘family meal’ methodology.
2. Admission of the family and the patient to a flat. In this second phase, the family is incorporated into the treatment, moving to live with the patient in one of the flats that the Hospital has set up near the centre. There, the professionals continue the treatment with the patient - which consists of individual and group therapies - and empower the family so that they have the tools to enable them to cope with the situations that arise in everyday life as a result of the disease.
3. Home transfer and home treatment. Once the professionals consider that the family and the patient are ready to go back to their normal life, they return home and, from then on, it is the professionals who periodically visit the patient's home to continue the treatment. The professionals work to promote, on the one hand, the patient's autonomy with regard to eating and, on the other, her return to school or high school.
4. Referral to the reference ED Unit. This is the last stage of treatment in which the team of professionals at the Hospital accompanies the patient in her referral ED Unit in her reference area. The aim is to ensure continuity of care in the therapeutic process.

The Unit cares for children under the guardianship of the Government of Catalonia, as well as boys and girls who are with their families and require particularly intense specialised care. Admittance and psycho-educational treatment is provided for a duration of 9 to 18 months.

With a maximum of 30 places, the Unit offers comprehensive and interdisciplinary care, which is coordinated with social and educational services in addition to intensive and personalised treatments that take into consideration the biological, cognitive, and psychosocial factors of children and adolescents.

The Acompanya’m Therapeutic Unit follows an innovative model, thanks to:

• The structure of the centre, which is distributed into residential therapeutic units.
• The intensity of the individual, group and family treatments.
• The provision of psycho-educational healthcare.
• Treatment and care provided in the community and in the child’s environment.

The multidisciplinary team is composed of professionals from various areas of and mental healthcare and education, with a range of expertise that complement each other.

The Unit is well located in very accessible area on the outskirts of the city, with spacious facilities and outdoor areas for doing open-air activities.

The care provided by the Acompanya’m Therapeutic Unit is coordinated with the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS) in a model where responsibilities are shared among the Department of Health, the Department of Education, the General Directorate for Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPiA) and SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital.