Childrens poor emotional self-regulation is associated withpoor mental health outcomes. This study presents methods thatimprove prediction rates of polite and frustrated speech usinglinguistic cues. These improvements can be used to help auto-matically identify characteristics of poor self-regulation in fu-ture studies. This work adds to previous research by consider-ing existing computer science, psychology, and psycholinguis-tics methodologies and findings. More specifically, featuresassociated with childrens cognitive control capacities acrossage groups are considered to investigate acoustic, semantic,and syntactic features in speech. The current analyses indi-cate that the features most predictive for polite and frustratedspeech differ, a combination of features work best for predict-ing both speech types, and the predictive quality of featuresdo not vary substantially by age. Further work should be con-ducted to clarify how well these findings transfer to general andclinical populations as well as to consider the developmentalnorms of different age groups.

Objective

In a novel model of embedded primary care child psychiatry serving an urban Latino population, we examined determinants of successful referral and relationship between clinical need and service intensity.

Methods

We conducted a chart review of referred patients from July 2013-March 2015. We used multiple logistic regressions controlling for confounders to identify determinants of successful referral. We examined the relationship between service intensity and clinical need using Poisson regression, adjusting for exposure time, age, sex, ethnicity, and language.

Results

Seventy-four percent of patients completed an evaluation. Younger children (p=.0397) and those with a history of therapy (p=.0077) were more likely to make initial contact. The markers of clinical need included PSC-35 Global Scores (p=.0027) and number of psychiatric diagnoses (p=.0178) predicted number of visits.

Conclusions

Our findings support early referral to improve engagement, and provide initial evidence that embedded child psychiatry consultation is feasible and may increase access to care.