Journal articles

We publish our research in peer-reviewed journals. For each article we also produce a plain language summary.

Click the + to view the links and summaries.

  • Social Forces, 2024

    O’Flaherty, King & Kavanagh

    This research looks at how adolescents spend their time on activities, education, and who they spend it with. It looks at differences between young people with and without disabilities. This is important as it may play a role in the disadvantage experienced by people with disability in later life. This research found large differences in the way young people with and without disability spend their time. This included spending less time in education and more time alone, with mothers, and on screen-based activities.

  • The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, 2024

    Emerson, Aitken, Arciuli, King, Llewellyn & Kavanagh

    This research looks at self-harm among adolescents with and without disabilities in the United Kingdom. The researchers used data from the Millennium Cohort Study, which followed a large group of children born around the year 2000. The authors found that adolescents with disabilities were much more likely to engage in self-harming behaviors compared to those without disabilities.

  • BMC Public Health, 2024

    Bishop, Llewellyn, Kavanagh, Badland, Bailie, Stancliffe, Emerson, Fortune & Aitken

    We know from previous research that disabled people are more likely to feel lonely than non-disabled people. It was not known if this had changed over time. This study uses Australian survey data collected across 18 years to find out. It found that disabled people are 1.5 to 1.9 times more likely to be lonely than non-disabled people. This has not changed in Australia for almost 20 years.

  • BMC Public Health, 2023

    Emerson, Stancliffe, Aitken, Bailie, Bishop, Badland, Llewellyn & Kavanagh

    This study looked at loneliness over time for people with and without disabilities in the United Kingdom. It used household survey data to do this. The researchers were interested in ongoing loneliness, where people feel lonely for long periods of time. It shows that disabled people are twice as likely to experience ongoing loneliness.

    Also, there are many risk factors that make someone more likely to be lonely. This study found that people with disabilities have more of these risk factors.

  • BMC Public Health, 2023

    Bailie, Bishop, Badland, Emerson, Aitken, Stancliffe, Ekanayake & Llewellyn

    This article gives us an overview of current research. It looks at how loneliness affects people with disability aged 15-64. The researchers were not able to find many studies on the topic. This makes it much harder to understand the issue in depth. They also learned that the tools to measure loneliness for disabled people were not the most appropriate. This is because many studies used tools intended for non-disabled people. We need more research in this area if we want to reduce loneliness for disabled people.

  • The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 2024

    Tania King - Commentary

    Bullying is a key public health issue and one of the most common adverse experiences of childhood and adolescence. According to a 2019 report on the global prevalence of bullying, 32% of children had been bullied in the previous month. Some groups are at greater risk of bullying than others, and one group that experiences higher than average rates of bullying is children with a physical or learning disability.

  • BMC Public Health, 2023

    Leung, Kavanagh, Quang, Shields & Aitken

    This study looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of young people with disabilities. It looked at young people aged 15 to 29. It is a specific type of study called a ‘systematic review’. We use these to summarise the research that already exists. The researchers found the pandemic possibly had a negative impact on the mental health of young disabled people. We need more research in this area to fully understand the topic.

  • Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2023

    Shields, Spittal, Aitken, Dimov, Kavanagh & King

    This article tells us about the relationship between employment and mental health for young people living with disabilities. It looks at people aged 20-35 years old. It shows that young people with disability have worse mental health compared to those without disabilities. This is partly because young people with disability are more likely to be unemployed.

  • Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 2023

    Bishop, Kavanagh, Disney & Aitken,

    We already know that people with disability have poorer mental health than those without disability. But evidence is lacking about mental health trends over time for disabled people. This study used Australian survey data over 18 years to look into this. It found a large difference in the mental health of people with and without a disability. We call this a mental health inequality. The study shows this has not improved over time. There is an increasing inequality for some groups, such as young women with disability. This means their mental health is getting worse over time.

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