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Assessment of the use of timeout in an inpatient child psychiatry treatment unit
Author(s) -
Jones Robert N.,
Downing Robert H.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
behavioral interventions
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.605
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1099-078X
pISSN - 1072-0847
DOI - 10.1002/bin.2360060307
Subject(s) - timeout , psychology , normative , psychiatry , child and adolescent psychiatry , developmental psychology , statistics , philosophy , mathematics , epistemology
This article describes the use of response contingent brief social isolation (i.e., timeout) with 770 children admitted to an inpatient child psychiatry treatment unit during a 2‐year study period. A total of 2,256 timeouts were recorded during the study period. Preliminary normative frequency, duration, and reason for timeout information are reported for age and sex groups and for common diagnostic categories. Only a third (255) of the inpatients earned one or more timeouts during their hospitalization. The results suggest 2 trends for timeout in this inpatient setting. First, there was an inverse relationship between timeout frequency and subjects' age; i.e., frequency of timeouts tended to decrease as subjects' age increased. Second, there was a positive relationship between timeout duration and subjects' age; i.e., older subjects required longer timeouts. A third and tentative finding suggested that the frequency of timeout was differentially associated with primary diagnosis for some groups. Alternative treatment procedures are discussed.