Introduction:

Psychiatric emergencies in pediatric age constitute a public health problem.

Objective:

To describe the psychiatric emergencies and the behavior followed, at the time of their evaluation, in patients attended in an emergency consultation.

Methods:

Observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study in 340 patients examined at "Juan Manuel Márquez" Pediatric Hospital, from January to April 2019. An instrument validated in previous studies was used and interviews were conducted with patients and relatives. Data processing and analysis was performed with SPSS 21 and descriptive statistics were used. For the comparison of observed and expected frequencies of a variable, the binomial test and the Chi-square, with a probability of 0.5% were used.

Results:

53.8% of patients were between 15 and 19 years old, and 50.3 % were male. 61.2 % had a psychiatric pathological history and 40.3% came from problematic family environments. Among the main reasons for consultation were suicidal behaviour and the consumption of psychoactive substances. 25% of patients required hospitalization, the rest were referred to outpatient care. Psychotropic drugs were used in more than 60%.

Conclusions:

In the study predominated adolescents, males, with a personal pathological history of psychiatric illness, from conflictive family environments, diagnosed with behavioral disorders, suicidal behavior, affective disorders, psychosis and addictive disorders; among the latter, dual pathology was diagnosed. Only a quarter required hospitalization and most used psychotropic drugs.

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