One in five U.S. hospital admissions are for patients with mental disorders

According to the latest figures from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in the United States, one in five hospital admissions are for patients with mental disorders.

The AHRQ report says in 2006 about 1.4 million hospitalizations involved patients who were admitted for a mental illness, while another 7.1 million patients had a mental disorder in addition to the physical condition for which they were admitted. The 8.5 million hospitalizations involving patients with mental illness represented about 22% of the overall 39.5 million hospitalizations in 2006.

AHRQ's analysis has found that of the nearly 1.4 million hospitalizations specifically for treatment of a mental disorder in 2006, almost 730,000 involved depression or other mood disorders, such as bipolar disease - schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders caused another 381,000 - delirium which can cause agitation or inability to focus attention, dementia, amnesia and other cognitive problems accounted for 131,000 - anxiety disorders and adjustment disorders, stress-related illnesses that can affect feeling, thoughts, and behaviours accounted for another 76,000 and the remaining 34,000 hospitalizations involved attention-deficit disorder, disruptive behaviour, impulse control, personality disorders, or mental disorders usually diagnosed in infancy or later childhood.

The figures are based on data from 'Hospital Stays Related to Mental Health, 2006' and the report uses statistics from the 2006 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a database of hospital inpatient stays that is nationally representative of inpatient stays in all short-term, non-Federal hospitals. The data comes from hospitals that comprise 90% of all discharges in the United States and include all patients, regardless of insurance type, as well as the uninsured.