Paediatric bipolar disorder: international comparisons of hospital discharge rates 2000–2010

BACKGROUND: Controversy surrounds the diagnosis and prevalence of paediatric bipolar disorder, with estimates varying considerably between countries. AIMS: To determine the international hospital discharge rates for paediatric bipolar disorder compared with all other psychiatric diagnoses. METHOD: We used national data-sets from 2000 to 2010 from England, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Germany. RESULTS: For those aged under 20 years, the discharge rates for paediatric bipolar disorder per 100 000 population were: USA 95.6, Australia 11.7, New Zealand 6.3, Germany 1.5 and England 0.9. The most marked divergence in discharge rates was in 5- to 9-year-olds: USA 27, New Zealand 0.22, Australia 0.14, Germany 0.03 and England 0.00. CONCLUSIONS: The disparity between US and other discharge rates for paediatric bipolar disorder is markedly greater than the variation for child psychiatric discharge rates overall, and for adult rates of bipolar disorder. This suggests there may be differing diagnostic practices for paediatric bipolar disorder in the USA. DECLARATION OF INTEREST: None. COPYRIGHT AND USAGE: © 2015 The Royal College of Psychiatrists. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.