Original ArticleIncreased Rates of Bipolar Disorder Diagnoses Among U.S. Child, Adolescent, and Adult Inpatients, 1996–2004
Section snippets
Data Source
The National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) is a component of the National Health Care Survey, which the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), conducts annually. The NHDS captures patient-level information pertaining to discharges during the calendar year from non-Federal general hospitals and children’s hospitals, regardless of length of stay, and other, more specialized hospitals whose average length of stay is
Overall Psychiatric Hospitalizations
Over all survey years, the proportion of discharges of patients aged 5 to 64 for which a psychiatric diagnosis was primary was 6.91%.
Psychiatric disorders came to represent a slightly larger proportion of the total hospital discharges between 1996 (6.87%) and 2004 (7.06%). The linear trend over survey years was appreciable (r = .39), but adolescents and children accounted for most of the increase. Among adolescents, psychiatrically associated discharges constituted 13.64% of that group’s total
Discussion
A very large increase in the number of discharges from acute care settings with a primary diagnosis of BD occurred among children and adolescents between 1996 and 2004. Bipolar disorder was one of the least frequent diagnoses recorded among child inpatients in 1996 but was the most common in 2004. Among adolescents in 1996, there were twice as many discharges with a depressive disorder as with a BD diagnosis but by 2004 the rates were about equal. These increases significantly outpace the more
References (40)
- et al.
Who gets hospitalized in a continuum of care?
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(1996) - et al.
Age, rapid-cycling, and pharmacotherapy effects on ventral prefrontal cortex in bipolar disorder: A cross-sectional study
Biol Psychiatry
(2006) - et al.
Prevalence, clinical correlates, and longitudinal course of severe mood dysregulation in children
Biol Psychiatry
(2006) - et al.
Fronto-limbic brain abnormalities in juvenile onset bipolar disorder
Biol Psychiatry
(2005) Mania and ADHD: Comorbidity or confusion
J Affect Disord
(1998)- et al.
Cortical magnetic resonance imaging findings in familial pediatric bipolar disorder
Biol Psychiatry
(2005) - et al.
Success-based, noncoercive treatment of oppositional behavior in children from violent homes
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(2000) - et al.
The genetics of pediatric-onset bipolar disorder
Biol Psychiatry
(2003) - et al.
An MRI study of adolescent patients with either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder as compared to healthy control subjects
Biol Psychiatry
(1999) - et al.
Prepubertal and early adolescent bipolarity differentiate from ADHD by manic symptoms, grandiose delusions, ultra-rapid or ultradian cycling
J Affect Disord
(1998)