Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - high psychological distress
Back
Please note that these indicators are not currently up to date and will be replaced shortly with dashboards. In the meantime the most currently available data is available at https://www.data.act.gov.au or contact healthinfo@act.gov.au
Commentary
- In 2018-19, the percentage of ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who reported experiencing high psychological distress was 28.6%.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics1 defined psychological distress as follows:
- The Kessler 5 (K5) score is a measure of non-specific psychological distress, derived from a modified version of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10). It uses five questions (instead of 10), and is designed for use in surveys of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The K5 (and K10) is not a diagnostic tool, but is used as an indicator of levels of psychological distress experienced recently.
- Respondents were asked questions about how often they had experienced negative emotional states in the previous four weeks by selecting one of five responses presented on a prompt card, ranging from ‘all of the time’ to ‘none of the time’.
- ‘Don’t know’ and refusal options were available and, if selected, an overall score was unable to be determined.
- Responses to the questions were combined to produce an overall score between five and 25.
- The scores were then grouped to describe the level of psychological distress as low/moderate (5–11) or high/very high (12–25).
References
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey methodology Canberra: ABS; 2019 [cited 2021 Feb 8].
Chart
High psychological distressin Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by state and territory, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey 2018-19
Data
To access the data, select "View source data" link at the bottom of the visualisation. This link will open up a data table that you can download.
Codes and sources
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics. National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander HealthSurvey, 2018-19