Use of medical and behavioral health services by adolescents with bipolar disorder.

Objective: This study compared use of medical and behavioral health care by adolescents with bipolar disorder and other adolescents and identified areas in need of more clinical attention.

Methods: Medical and behavioral health insurance claims from 1996 for 100,880 adolescents were examined and categorized. Differences between and among various categories of disease were explored by using multivariate analyses.

Results: Among the 10,970 adolescents who used at least one behavioral health service, adolescents with bipolar disorder (N=326) had significantly higher behavioral health costs than those with mood or non-mood disorders, a result driven by these adolescents' significantly higher hospital admission rates for behavioral health care. Adolescents with bipolar disorder also had significantly higher medical admission rates compared with adolescents who had other behavioral health diagnoses. More than half of the 14 medical admissions for adolescents with bipolar disorder were due to drug overdose.

Conclusions: Reallocation of medical and behavioral health resources to improve ambulatory treatment of bipolar disorder among adolescents has the potential to decrease the use and costs of health care while improving the welfare of these adolescents and their families.