How to read this report

This report provides data about mental health care in hospitals for people with disability who receive government disability supports. You can read it in the way that works best for you. If you want a quick overview, start with the Summary and Key findings – these sections highlight the key messages. If you want more detail, you can go to the chapters about specific groups:

Each chapter is set out in a similar way, with an introduction, key findings, and supporting figures and tables.

Alternatively, downloadable data tables disaggregated by disability support category, age, sex and remoteness are available for further analysis. Explore the data.

What is included in this report?

This report focuses on public hospital mental health care for people who receive government disability supports. It looks at mental health-related emergency department presentations (ED) and hospitalisations. The report compares people receiving different types of disability supports with people who receive no government disability supports. The “no supports” group includes both people without disability and people with disability who do not receive government disability supports.

What is not included in this report?

  • This report does not capture all mental health-related reasons for hospital care. Intentional self-harm and poisoning are not considered mental health conditions even though they may be associated with a mental health condition. They are not always classified as a mental health presentation in ED data.
  • People living in Western Australia and the Northern Territory are not included because hospital data was not available for those jurisdictions.
  • Results cannot be reported by disability type. The National Disability Data Asset (NDDA) disability flags, which represent people with disability in the data, are based on administrative data from different government services and payments, each with different eligibility rules and ways of recording disability. Because these flags do not provide one consistent measure of disability, disability type cannot yet be identified in this dataset.

How are results reported?

Some results are shown as rates per 100,000 people. This is a way of comparing groups that are different sizes. You will also see phrases like “8 times as likely”, which means one group used hospital mental health care much more often than another group. Age-standardised rates compare rates between groups after adjusting for differences in age, so the comparison is more accurate. Only the rates for ED presentations and hospitalisations have been adjusted for these age differences.

Things to consider

Although the below factors were not examined in this report, they may be relevant when interpreting the findings.

  • People with psychosocial disability often have greater mental health support needs, including hospital care, than people with disability overall.
  • People with intellectual disability also have distinct mental health support needs.
  • Government disability support groups have different eligibility rules and age profiles; however, only the rates for ED presentations and hospitalisations have been age-standardised. 
  • Social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) is the preferred terminology for First Nations communities.

Further research is needed to understand how these factors may contribute to the patterns of hospital use reported here. 

How to interpret these findings

Comparisons across disability support groups should be interpreted with caution. Rates of ED presentations and hospitalisations were age adjusted to account for differences in age profiles across disability support groups. However, other differences in eligibility criteria and population characteristics, such as sex and type of disability, may also influence the results. This report does not explain why these results occurred. Further research is needed to better understand how higher hospital use may relate to factors such as financial hardship, acute mental ill-health, or gaps in the broader service system. Learn more about What we cannot see in the data.

Downloadable data tables disaggregated by disability support category, age, sex and remoteness are available for further analysis. Explore the data.

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