Children’s Residential Crisis Stabilization Units

S.A. Larocco
August, 2018

PRODUCED BY THE
Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy at the University of Virginia

As psychiatric hospitalizations increase in Virginia and the census at the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents is at an all-time high, advocates and policymakers look for alternatives to hospitalization to ameliorate the problem. One such alternative is the crisis stabilization unit, a therapeutic environment for people in a sub-acute state of crisis. Current approaches used in these programs are geared toward patients with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders and executive functioning deficits.