The cumulative effect of living with disability on mental health in working-age adults: an analysis using marginal structural models

Abstract

PURPOSE: Previous studies have shown that acquiring a disability is associated with a reduction in mental health, but they have not considered the cumulative impact of having a disability on mental health. We used acquisition of a non-psychological disability to estimate the association of each additional year lived with disability on mental health (measured using the Mental Component Summary score of the Short Form Health Survey). METHODS: We used the first 13 waves of data (years 2001-2013) from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. The sample included 4113 working-age (18-65 years) adults who were disability-free at waves 1 and 2. We fitted marginal structural mod..