Paediatric Bipolar Disorder in the US vs.UK V.1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Paediatric Bipolar Disorder in the US vs.UK: The Emergence and Resistance of a Contested Diagnosis
IRAS ID
134148
Contact name
Jane Roberts
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
London School of Economics and Political Science
Research summary
The diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children has been made with increasing frequency in North America in the last decade despite over a century of agreement within psychiatry that manic-depressive illness rarely presented before adolescence (Healy and Le Noury 2007). This is illustrated in the 40-fold increase of outpatient office visits in the US for children and adolescents with bipolar disorder from 20,000 in 1994–95 to 800,000 in 2002–03 (Kaplan 2011). In the UK however, there seems to be a clinical resistance to such widespread application of the diagnosis. The British National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has stated their position as acknowledging that while children can “present with many features suggestive of a diagnosis of bipolar disorder”, they remained unconvinced that there was enough clinical evidence available to support the everyday clinical use of the diagnosis” (British National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence 2006, p. 526).
To explore why paediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) has expanded as a diagnosis in the US while remaining relatively undiagnosed in the UK, I will be speaking to parents of children with bipolar, clinicians who treat such children, and conducting an analysis of communication within online parent support fora to explore how knowledge about the disorder is constructed by these different groups. 30 parents and 30 clinicians from both the US and UK will be recruited, with participants in the UK drawn from a London CAMHS team. Semi-structured interviews lasting 45 minutes to 1 hour will cover parental and clinical ideas about potential causes of PBD, source of initial knowledge about the disorder and its treatments, the reaction of a parent to the diagnosis for their child and attitudes towards treatment. Recruitment and interviews of UK participants will take place from August to December 2013.
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/EM/0313
Date of REC Opinion
9 Aug 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion