Notes on the data: Community Mental Health Care Services

Community Mental Health Care Service patients, by sex and Community Mental Health Care Service contacts, by principal diagnosis, 2020/21

Policy context: Mental health is a key component of overall health and wellbeing [1]. In any year in Australia, an estimated one in five people aged 16–85 will experience a mental disorder [2]. A person’s mental health affects and is affected by multiple factors, including lower (by socioeconomic status) access to services (health and/or other services), living conditions and employment status, and affects not only the individual but also their families and carers [2].

Mental illness is often treated in specialised community and hospital-based outpatient psychiatric services provided by state and territory governments. Collectively, these services are referred to as specialised community mental health care (CMHC) services [3].

CMHC service contacts can be conducted as either individual or group sessions and can also be face-to-face, via telephone, or using other forms of direct communication such as video link. They can be conducted in the presence of the patient, with a third party (such as a carer or family member) and/or other professionals or mental health workers [3]. The majority of service contacts reported in 2020/21 involved individual contact sessions (96%) and 4% of contacts were group sessions. Just over half of all contacts were individual sessions (52%), where the patient participated in the service contact (termed ‘patient present’) [4].

In 2005/06, almost 5.7 million CMHC service contacts took place across Australia, and this has increased to 10.2 million in 2020-21 [4]. Around 10.2 million community mental health care service contacts were provided to mental health patients in 2020/2021 [4]. In 2020/21, a slightly higher proportion of CMHC patients were females (a rate of 25.9 females per 1,000 female population, cf. 23.2 per 1,000 for males, and females accessed services at a higher rate than males [5] [4].

Mental disorder not otherwise specified (in the table below, included in the category ‘All other codes not specified’) was the most frequently recorded mental health-related principal diagnosis for service contacts, with 2,085,158 contacts in 2020/21. This diagnosis may be used when a patient presents to a service for care, but further investigation is required by clinical staff to make a formal diagnosis [3].

The highest rates of CMHC patients were at younger ages, with rates of 44.7 patients per 1,000 population at ages 15 to 19 years, 31.0 at ages 20 to 24 years, 26.3 at ages 25 to 29 years and 25.8 at 10 to 14 years [6]. Females comprised 64.0% of patients at ages 15 to 19 years, 59.7% at ages 10 to 14 years and 56.6% at ages 20 to 24 years [6].

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, 2020-2022. Available from: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/mental-health/national-study-mental-health-and-wellbeing/latest-release; last accessed 4 September 2024.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). Australia's mental health system. Available from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/mental-health/overview/australias-mental-health-services; last accessed 4 September 2024.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). Community mental health care services. Available from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/mental-health/topic-areas/community-services; last accessed 4 September 2024.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). Community mental health care services, 2020-21. Available from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/7f40c0f7-e0ba-4e4f-97da-08cdb23b545f/community-mental-health-care-2020-21.pdf; last accessed 4 September 2024.
PHIDU (www.phidu.torrens.edu.au) based on community mental health care services, 2020/21 data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, as supplied by state and territory health authorities.
Calculated by PHIDU from data supplied by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, as per ‘Source’, below

Notes:

The data presented are the number of males/females/persons patients who accessed the community mental health service, or the number of service contacts by mental health-related principal diagnosis.

Details of data presented:

Community Mental Health Care Service patients, by sex
- Community mental health care patients, males
- Community mental health care patients, females
- Community mental health care patients, persons
Community Mental Health Care Service contacts, by principal diagnosis

Note: Bracketed numbers below refer to codes in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10-AM) chapters.

Schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders (F20-F29)
Bipolar affective disorders (F31)
Depressive episode (F32)
Other anxiety disorders (F41)
Reaction to severe stress and adjustment disorders (F43)
Specific personality disorders (F60)
All other codes (not specified): F90-F99, All other F codes, Other
Total Community Mental Health Care Service contacts

For more information refer to the Community mental health care services.

Caveat
As a result of the relatively small number of services for many diagnoses when analysed at the small geographic level, it has only been possible to publish data for some of the diagnostic codes. Further details as to the large number of contacts in the ‘All other codes’ sub-total can be found in Table CMHC.15 in the MS Excel workbook here.

Confidentiality of data
The number of patients or service contacts have not been published for values between 1 and 4.

Geography: Data available by Population Health Area, Local Government Area, Primary Health Network, Quintile of socioeconomic disadvantage of area and Quintiles within PHNs, and Remoteness Area

Numerator: The indicators presented are:

Number of males/females/persons patients who accessed the community mental health service
Number of service contacts by principal diagnosis

Denominator: Total population

Detail of analysis: Indirectly age-standardised rate per 1,000 population; and/or indirectly age-standardised ratio, based on the Australian standard.

Source: Compiled by PHIDU using data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2020/21, as supplied by state and territory health authorities; and the average of the ABS Estimated Resident Population, 30 June 2020 and 30 June 2021.