Background: Diagnoses of paediatric bipolar disorder have increased over the last two decades in the United States, where high levels of comorbidity with ADHD have also been reported.
Aims: To explore how British clinicians apply these diagnoses.
Method: We compared 378 young people under the age of 18 who received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and/or ADHD from a large NHS mental health trust between 1992 and 2007.
Results: Children with bipolar disorder were rare in this sample (n = 35, 1.0%), particularly under the age of 13 (n = 9, 0.3%). Children with bipolar disorder presented more often with affective and psychotic symptoms than children with ADHD. Irritability was common in both disorders. Core ADHD symptoms were prevalent in both conditions but occurred in a greater proportion of children with ADHD.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that psychiatrists in England use the traditional adult criteria of bipolar disorder rather than the broader criteria being adopted by some practitioners in the US.