CASE STUDY Open Access Implementing psychiatric day treatment for infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families: a study from a clinical and organizational perspective Tilman Furniss * , Jörg M Müller, Sandra Achtergarde, Ida Wessing, Marlies Averbeck-Holocher and Christian Postert Abstract Background: An increasing number of empirical studies indicate that infants, toddlers and preschoolers may suffer from non-transient mental illnesses featuring developmental psychopathology. A few innovative child psychiatric approaches have been developed to treat infants, toddlers and preschoolers and their families, but have not yet been conceptually presented and discussed in the framework of different healthcare systems. The organizational and clinical experience gained while developing specific approaches may be important across disciplines and guide future developments in psychiatric treatment of infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families. Results: This article introduces the Preschool Family Day Hospital for Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers and their Families at Münster University Hospital, Germany. This hospital is unique in the German healthcare system with regard to its social-service institution division of labor. Specifically, it uses an intermittent treatment approach and an integrated interactional family psychiatric approach to treat children and their parents as separate patients. This multidisciplinary, developmentally and family-oriented approach includes components of group treatments with children and separate treatments with parents. Specific techniques include video-assisted treatments of the parent–child interaction, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic treatments for parents, and conjoint family therapies that include both parents and siblings. Conclusions: The Family Day Hospital for infants, toddlers and preschoolers and their families offers innovative family-oriented treatments for those who suffer from a wide range of severe child psychiatric disorders that cannot be sufficiently treated in outpatient settings. Treatment is based on the need for family-oriented approaches to the early psychiatric treatment of infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Family day hospitals are an innovative approach to preschool child psychiatry that requires further evaluation. Keywords: Infant, Toddler and preschooler mental health, Preschool Family Day Hospital, Parent–child interaction therapy, Adults as psychiatric patients in child psychiatry Background An increasing number of empirical studies indicate that infants, toddlers and preschoolers may suffer from non- transient mental illnesses featuring developmental psycho- pathology [1,2] In addition, recent epidemiologic studies have shown that severe internalizing and externalizing mental health symptoms in the clinical range are present in 12%-18% of all preschoolers. This rate is comparable to the prevalence in school-age children [2-5]. Unfortunately, child psychiatric disorders in young children are often underdiagnosed due to insufficient knowledge regarding the symptoms of early mental health disorders and the lack of adequate diagnostic categories and instruments [6]. Children with mental illnesses need age-appropriate psychiatric assessments and treatments; furthermore, these interventions should begin as early as possible to maximize treatment effects and minimize nega- tive, long-term consequences [7,8]. This need for treatment * Correspondence: Furniss@ukmuenster.de Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital Münster, Schmeddingstr. 50, 48149, Münster, Germany © 2013 Furniss et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Furniss et al. International Journal of Mental Health Systems 2013, 7:12 http://www.ijmhs.com/content/7/1/12