Employment status and mental health among persons with and without a disability: Evidence from an Australian cohort study

A Milner; AD LaMontagne; Z Aitken; R Bentley; AM Kavanagh

Journal article

Employment status and mental health among persons with and without a disability: Evidence from an Australian cohort study

A Milner, AD LaMontagne, Z Aitken, R Bentley, AM Kavanagh

Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health | Published : 2014

DOI: 10.1136/jech-2014-204147

Abstract

Background: Unemployment and economic inactivity are associated with worse mental health in the general population, but there is limited understanding of whether these relationships are different for those persons with mental or physical disabilities. The aim of this study was to assess whether there were differences in mental health by labour force status among persons with and without disabilities. Method: Over eight annual waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, a total of 2379 people with disabilities and 11 417 people without disabilities were identified. Mental health using the Mental Component Summary (MCS) from the Short Form 36 was modelled as..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Zoe Aitken Author

Rebecca Bentley Author

Anne Kavanagh Author

Related Projects (1)

the importance of gender and socio-economic disadvantage for the mental health of people living with disabilities

The twenty per cent of Australians reporting a disability are more likely to live in disadvantaged circumstances such as inadequate housing,..

Grants

Funding Acknowledgements

The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). This work was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) through project (grant #375196) and postdoctoral research fellow (to AM) support (NHMRC Capacity-Building grant #546248), and was supported by Centre grant funding (#2010-0509/1) from the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Melbourne.