ACTGHS psychological distress, adult age groups

Commentary

The Kessler 6 (K6) scale was developed to discriminate cases of serious mental illness from non-cases.It uses a five-level response scale about how often someone reports feeling nervous, hopeless, restless or fidgety, that everything was an effort, so sad that nothing could cheer them up and worthless in the past four weeks.

8.4% of respondents to the 2022 ACT General Health Survey aged 25 to 44 years, 3.4% of respondents aged 45 to 64 years and 4.0% of respondents aged 65 years and over had a K6 score which indicated probable serious mental illness. Respondents aged 25 to 44 years were significantly more likely to report a K6 score which indicates probable serious mental illness than respondents aged 45 to 64 years in 2022.

Probable serious mental illness is based on a score of 19-30. This corresponds with the score categorisation used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. For more information, visit Information Paper: Use of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale in ABS Health Surveys, Australia, 2007-08.

If a respondent was missing one value, the missing value was replaced with the mean of the five non-missing values. If a respondent was missing more than one value, they were excluded from analysis.

For the purpose of reporting the ACT General Health Survey data on HealthStats, if the 95% confidence intervals of the estimates do not overlap, they are considered to be significantly different.

Note: The indicator shows self-reported data collected through Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI). Estimates were weighted to adjust for differences in the probability of selection among respondents and were benchmarked to the estimated residential population using the latest available Australian Bureau of Statistics population estimates.

Respondents to the 2022 survey were aged 18 years and over. Persons includes male, female, other and refused sex respondents and may not always add to the sum of male and female.

The following estimates have a relative standard error between 25% and 50% and should be used with caution:

• 2011/12 and 2013/14: respondents aged 25 to 44 years
• 2013/14, 2015/16 and 2018: respondents aged 45 to 64 years
• 2011/12, 2013/14, 2015/16, 2019 and 2022: respondents aged 65 years and over.

The following estimates have not been published due to small numbers or a relative standard error greater than 50%:

• 2011/12, 2013/14, 2015/16, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022: respondents aged 18 to 24 years
• 2015/16: respondents aged 25 to 44 years
• 2018, 2020 and 2021: respondents aged 65 years and over.

Statistically significant differences are difficult to detect for smaller jurisdictions such as the Australian Capital Territory. Sometimes, even large apparent differences may not be statistically significant. This is particularly the case in breakdowns of small populations because the small sample size means that there is not enough power to identify even large differences as statistically significant.

Chart

Proportion of adults aged 18 years and over whose K6 score indicates probable serious mental illness, by age group, ACT General Health Survey, 2011-2022

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

Q. In the past 4 weeks, about how often did you feel:

nervous
hopeless
restless or fidgety
that everything was an effort
so sad that nothing could cheer you up
worthless

All of the time; Most of the time; Some of the time; A little of the time; None of the time; Don't know; Refused

Don't know and refused responses were excluded from analysis.

A copy of the ACT General Health Survey questionnaires can be found in Data collections.