One of the information activities initiated under the National Mental Health Strategy was the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing of Adults conducted in 1997. A second survey (the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing) was conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics from August to December 2007 using a nationally representative sample of 8,841 respondents aged between 16 and 85.
In the survey, mental health and wellbeing was measured using a modified version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). The CIDI is a comprehensive interview instrument developed by the
World Health Organization and designed to translate self-reported symptoms to a diagnostic category based on the ICD-10 classification. The survey collected information on three major groups of mental disorders: anxiety disorders, affective disorders and substance use disorders.
The symptoms of a mental disorder were experienced at some time during the twelve-month period prior to the survey by an estimated 3.2 million people (20% of the population aged between 16 and 24), while 7.3 million (45%) reported a lifetime mental disorder.
Women were more likely than men to have experienced symptoms of a mental disorder during the previous twelve-months (22% of women compared to 18% of men) and young women reported the highest rates (30% for those women aged 16 to 24).
Women were more likely than men to report the symptoms of anxiety disorders during the previous twelve-months (18% of women compared to 11% of men). Women were also more likely to report affective disorders, such as depression (7% of women compared with 5% of men). Men were more than twice as likely to report the symptoms of substance use disorders (7% of men compared with 3% of women). Young men reported the highest rate of substance use disorder, 16% for those men aged 16-24.
Young people were much more likely to report a mental disorder in the previous twelve-months (26%) and there was a steady reduction in this rate with increasing age.
Just over a third (35%) of people with a 12-month mental disorder had accessed services for mental health problems. General practitioners provided the service most frequently used and women were more likely than men to have consulted any service.
People with affective disorder were much more likely to use health services than those with an anxiety or substance use disorder and those experiencing multiple disorders were also much more likely to use health services than those with only one disorder.