Sixteen Axis 5 ICD-10 codes were applied to a prospective multicentre study of 276 adolescent psychiatric inpatients. Frequency distributions were obtained for the whole cohort and separately for each of the seven main ICD-9 psychiatric diagnoses. Certain abnormal psychosocial situations were associated with particular diagnoses, and many significant correlations were found between Axis 5 codes. Factor analysis with varimax rotation produced four factors accounting for 46% of the total variance.