Not all children with serious emotional disturbance require medication or a psychiatric evaluation. At the conclusion of the assessment or whenever needed throughout treatment, your therapist or case manager will discuss the medically necessary treatments to consider for your child. At any time during treatment, you may also bring up services you wish to discuss or consider. Most often children require a brief period of treatment to fully determine if medication should be considered. Some conditions are managed very well by family doctors, and families often prefer to have only one person prescribing medications for their children. In those instances, the parent, the family doctor and the therapist work together to communicate about needs and progress of the child. In other situations there is need for an evaluation by a psychiatrist, and the appointment is scheduled by the therapist or case manager.

Some children are seen by the psychiatrist once or twice, but are not prescribed medication. Some children are prescribed medication for a short period of time, but are not on medication on a continuing basis. Other children will be prescribed medication that will continue for a longer period. In the situation where the child is on a medication and it is working well, the psychiatrist, nurse and therapist/case manager will work with the family and the family doctor to transition the child back to the family care doctor for the medication management. The child and adolescent psychiatrist remains available to the family doctor for consultation if there are questions or concerns. Also, if requested by the family doctor, the psychiatrist will do an evaluation every year to look at the medication and offer recommendations to the family doctor.