Austria’s Burgenland urged to expand child psychiatric care

The Austrian Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has called for expanded care for children and adolescents with mental health conditions in Burgenland, an Austrian federal state, ORF reported.

Burgenland is the only federal state in Austria that still has no inpatient treatment place for children and adolescents, the society said in a statement.

While other areas of the hospital system are being expanded, including the development of cardiac surgery in Oberwart, other parts of healthcare have been “completely neglected for years”, the society said.

It described the situation as a “serious failure of state policy” and called for mental illnesses in childhood and adolescence to receive the same priority in healthcare as physical illnesses.

Children and adolescents in Burgenland are also entitled to high-quality inpatient care close to home, the society said.