National Preventive Mechanism 5.2.2 Inadequate child and adolescent psychiatric care The Children and Adolescent Health Report published by the Federal Ministry of Health and Women’s Affairs in January 2016 establishes that there are structural deficits in the care provided both in the outpatient and inpatient areas of child and adolescent psychiatry – based on information from around 165,000 children and adolescents requiring treatment in Austria. Considerable underachievement of planned objectives The Austrian Health Care Structure Plan (Österreichischer Strukturplan Gesundheit) 2012 stipulates a benchmark of 0.08 to 0.13 beds per 1,000 inhabitants in the full inpatient child and adolescent psychiatry as well as a quantitative benchmark for so called “outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry units” (one outpatient child and adolescent unit per 250,000 inhabitants). Applied to the current population level, this indicates a need of 670 to 1,089 treatment beds based on the bed benchmark for the child and adolescent psychiatry. There are currently about 370. Furthermore, all of the federal states – with the exception of Carinthia – are far from fulfilling the planned benchmark by 2020. The resulting care deficits were examined by the NPM in the year under review using the Laender of Styria and Vienna as an example. They were addressed by the NPM in the Laender reports to the Diets of Vienna and Styria. It is evident from the Regional Health Care Structure Plan for Styria (Regionaler Strukturplan Gesundheit Stmk 2011) that even the goals for the year 2020 with 74 beds in child and adolescent psychiatry or day-care places are far below the goals of the Austrian Health Care Structure Plan 2012 as far as the total number of inhabitants in Styria (2016: 1.231,865) is concerned. Care deficits in Styria There were a mere 33 beds in full inpatient child and adolescent psychiatry and 14 beds in child and adolescent psychiatry day-care places available in Styria in 2016. There were additional 12 beds each in the University Clinic of Graz Regional Hospital and in Hochsteiermark/Leoben Regional Hospital for the treatment of psychosomatic illnesses. Since further treatment in case of an occurring acute severe psychiatric illness and a resultant involuntary placement under measures that restrict freedom is not possible in these psychosomatic wards, the affected minor patients have to be moved from Leoben to Graz Süd-West/Standort Süd Regional Hospital in acute crises. Styria holds last place in Austria with the current bed index of 0.04, which was also confirmed by the Austrian Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie) in a broadcast in April 2016. This inadequate care situation causes extreme pressure in the child and adolescent psychiatry ward in Graz Süd-West/Standort Süd Regional Hospital. The requests for beds and transfers from all over the Land result in a lack of beds on the one hand, and in waiting time and shortened stays with frequent overcrowding of 110 to 115% on the other. The treatment of patients 123