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Mentally ill patients are more likely to return to hospital within a year of their discharge than others and accounted for a third of all general hospital stays in 2003-2004.

A new report released Wednesday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information says 45 per cent of patients with a personality disorder were readmitted to hospital within a year of being discharged from hospital, as were 41 per cent of people with schizophrenia.

Six per cent of all hospitalizations during that year were directly for mental illness.

Another 8 per cent of patients had mental illness as a secondary issue. Because the average length of these hospital stays were more than double the length of others, mental health patients accounted for 30 per cent of total patient days in Canadian general hospitals.

Overall, 37 per cent of people diagnosed with mental illness ended up back in hospital, the report says. That compares to 27 per cent of all other patients who were readmitted.

“This is an area of concern for health planners, because, among other things, treating a patient in hospital is significantly more expensive than treatment at the outpatient or community level,” said Nawaf Madi, CIHI's program lead for mental health and addictions.

The risk of readmission rose with age.

While 26.5 per cent of mentally ill patients aged under 15 were readmitted, for people aged over 65 that likelihood rose to 38.7 per cent. Readmissions were similar for women and men (38.3 per cent and 35.5 per cent respectively).

The longer the initial general hospital stay, the greater the chance of readmission within one year.

Conditions such as depression and bipolar disorder were the most common diagnoses for mental health hospitalizations in 11 of 12 provinces and territories. The exception was the Northwest Territories, where substance-related disorders were most common.

The vast majority (86%) of patients hospitalized because of mental illness in 2003-2004 were cared for in general hospitals, rather than in psychiatric hospitals. Patients with schizophrenia, generally considered the most severe mental health condition, were more likely than any other group to have received treatment from a psychiatric hospital, rather than a general hospital.