We know that people with disability have poorer mental health than those without disability. This difference is called a mental health inequality. The aim of this article was to find out if this has changed over time.

To do this, the researchers used data from a survey of Australian households over 18 years. They first needed to compare the mental health of people with and without a disability. They focused on a question about mental health. A low score meant poorer mental health, and a high score meant better mental health. These scores allowed them to look for changes in mental health for people with and without disability.

The authors then organised data into separate categories. These were age, sex, and type of disability. They did this because they wanted to look at changes in mental health for different groups of people.

This study found that disabled people had worse mental health than non-disabled people for every year between 2003 and 2020. There was no improvement over time regardless of age or sex. This adds to previous research by showing that mental health inequalities persist over time.

The study also found some groups had worsening mental health over time. We call this a widening inequality. This is true for young women with disability. It is also true for some types of disability. These were intellectual or learning disabilities and psychological disabilities. People with brain injury and stroke also had widening inequalities.

This study was done because there was no evidence about whether mental health had changed over time for disabled people. It confirms that people with disability have poorer mental health than those without disability. It shows that this has not changed over time. It also found that mental health is getting worse for some types of disability and for young women with disability.

About the author:

Rosie (she/they) is a lived experience research assistant living with mental illness. She loves the challenge of pursuing her interests in literature and health sciences concurrently and is proudly the only poet-physiotherapist that she knows of.