Australian Bureau of Statistics Mental Health Data
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) holds mental health data with characteristics of people using mental health services and prescription medication, including:
- Persons accessing Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) subsidised mental health-related services, by type of service and selected population characteristics
- Persons accessing Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) subsidised mental health-related prescription medication, by type of medication and selected population characteristics.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Data
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) produces a series of annual mental health reports that describe the activity and characteristics of Australia’s mental health care services. While the majority of data is presented at national and state and territory level, the AIHW has produced information on overnight mental health-related separations from hospital at the Primary Health Network (PHN) and statistical level 3 (SA3) level geographic areas.
AIHW Mental Health Data – overnight mental health-related separations
- Refer to Table 19 for PHN level data and Table 20 for SA3 level data
Please note that this data is also available on the AIHW’s MyHealthyCommunities website
Department of Health Data
Details about each program are provided within each dataset. The datasets provided for each program share the following standard features:
- Data are aggregated at the level of SA3 areas and PHN regions
- Unless otherwise stated, assignment of patient and service data to SA3/PHN is based on the patient’s postcode applicable at the last date of service in each reference period
- The content of data provided covers the following categories:
- patient count
- service count (or prescriptions in the case of PBS)
- government benefits paid (for MBS and PBS)
- Data extracted for each financial year is based on date of service (or equivalent) rather than date of processing
- Data are disaggregated by patient age and sex. Age groups are based on standard 5-year groupings except for the 0-24 year range. For this range, a different approach to age grouping is used that aligns with how mental health services are configured, both at State and Territory level and for Commonwealth program (e.g., headspace covers the age band 12-24). The groupings used are:
| Pre-school | 0-4 years |
| Primary school | 5-11 years |
| Secondary school | 12-17 years |
| Youth/young adult | 18-24 years |