2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing: Methods and Key Findings

By Tim Slade, A. Johnston, Mark A. Oakley Browne, G. Andrews, H. Whiteford. Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry (Print), 2009

808 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Objective: To provide a description of the methods and key findings of the 2007 Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing. Method: A national face-to-face household survey of 8841 (60% response rate) community residents aged between 16 and 85 years was carried out using the World Mental Health Survey Initiative version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Diagnoses were made according to ICD-10. Key findings include the prevalence of mental disorder, sex and age distributions of mental disorders, severity of mental disorders, comorbidity among mental disorders, and the extent of disability and health service use associated with mental disorders. Results: The prevalence of any lifetime mental disorder was 45.5%. The prevalence of any 12 month mental disorder was 20.0%, with anxiety disorders (14.4%) the most common class of mental disorder followed by affective disorders (6.2%) and substance use disorders (5.1%). Mental disorders, particularly affective disorders, were disabling. One in four people (25.4%) with 12 month mental disorders had more than one class of mental disorder. One-third (34.9%) of people with a mental disorder used health services for mental health problems in the 12 months prior to the interview. Conclusions: Mental disorders are common in Australia. Many people have more than one class of mental disorder. Mental disorders are associated with substantial disability, yet many people with mental disorders do not seek help for their mental health problems.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry and Mental health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/733667aa55fb8b0a9b40c97791549cd5a0b73bd1

How researchers see this paper

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In Clinical Psychology

1. Debra Rickwood
2. C. Wilson
3. Peter Caputi
4. Joseph Ciarrochi
5. J. Mayer

In Psychiatry and Mental health

1. Debra Rickwood
2. C. Wilson

In Social Psychology

1. Debra Rickwood
2. C. Wilson
3. Peter Caputi
4. J. Mayer
5. D. Chan

Citations in the corpus

• The effects of need for autonomy and preference for seeking help from informal sources on emerging adults’ intentions to access mental health services for common mental disorders and suicidal thoughts (2011, background): “The 2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (NSMHWB) found that those with an anxiety disorder reported having four days on average out of the last 30 when they were unable to pursue usual activities, and those with an affective disorder had six days out of role (Slade et al., 2009).”