Interactive: Youth mental health hot spots and cold spots across Australia

The last Census provided an unprecedented view of mental health diagnoses across parts of Australia. Which areas stand out?

With young people reporting higher rates of anxiety than older people, researchers are trying to understand what drives differences in mental health.

For the first time, the Australian Bureau of Statistics asked Australians in the 2021 Census whether they had been diagnosed with one or more mental health conditions.

The prevalence of mental health conditions in young people varies substantially across the country — even from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. 360info has delved into this data to identify youth mental health hot spots: areas with a higher proportion of mental health diagnoses in young people than their neighbours.

Areas marked as hot spots are further split into ‘isolated’ hot spots — areas surrounded by neighbours with low rates of mental health diagnoses — and connected hot spots, which are larger areas of high diagnosis rates.

Likewise, there are connected areas of low mental health reports, as well as more isolated ‘cold spots’.

The results show that diagnoses for conditions like anxiety or depression vary considerably for young people, even in our biggest cities.

Although the data comes from the 2021 Census, which was run during the COVID-19 pandemic when many parts of Australia were locked down, the question asked respondents whether they had been told by a doctor or nurse that they have a long-term mental health condition (including anxiety or depression) in the last 12 months.

This data cannot tell the whole story, though.

Diagnosis rates may vary for many reasons, including the availability of health care — people who are unable to access a doctor or enough continuity of care to establish a diagnosis for a long-term condition would not be represented in these figures.

Researchers also use complementary data, like detailed surveys on smaller sets of people, to try to understand the underlying drivers of mental health.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

Editors Note: In the story “Young minds on screens” sent at: 04/10/2023 17:51.

This is a corrected repeat.