Mental Health

• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Author: Peter Butterworth,Carmel Poyser,Aino Suomi
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12446

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 530–541 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.12446

Mental Health

Peter Butterworth, Carmel Poyser and Aino Suomi*

Abstract

Mental health has been a focus of over 200

journal articles using the HILDA Survey data.

This brief review provides an overview of the

mental health data collected through the HILDA

Survey, and discusses the potential reasons

why HILDA Survey data have been used so

frequently in mental health research. We reflect

on how the HILDA Survey data have: provided

insights into the profile of mental health in the

Australian community, illustrated the impor-

tance of social ties for mental health and

enabled investigation of social inequalities in

mental health.

1. Introduction

Mental health did not feature in the original

research and pol icy priorities tha t guided the

early development and planning of the HILDA

Survey. However, 21 years later, mental health

is one of the research topics most frequently

investigated using the HILDA Survey data.

This review considers published journal

articles that use HILDA Survey data and are

listed on the Melbourne Institute HILDA Survey

website (as at May 2021).1 After reviewing titles,

abstracts and the papers themselves, we found

that 210 of the 1,276 HILDA papers identified as

published between 2002 and 2020—16.5 per cent

of all HILDA journal articles—have a significant

focus on mental health.2 Further, the proportion

of HILDA papers examining mental health has

progressively increased each year, with almost a

quarter of HILDA Survey papers published

between 2018 and 2020 having a mental health

focus.Webeginthisreviewbydiscussing

potential reasons why a significant number of

studies using the HILDA Survey data have

examined mental health.

1.1 Measure It and They Will Come

The use of HILDA Survey data to study mental

health largely reflects the inclusion of the SF36

in the first and all subsequent waves of the

survey. The SF36 is one of the most widely

used measures of health status (Ware and

Gandek 1998). The 36‐item instrument gener-

ates eight scales that assess different aspects of

health, including a five‐item mental health scale

* Butterworth: Research School of Population Health,

Building 54, The Australian National University, ACT

2600, Australia; Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic

and Social Research, The University of Melbourne;

Poyser and Suomi: Research School of Population

Health, Building 54, The Australian National

University, ACT 2600, Australia. Corresponding author:

Butterworth, email <Peter.Butterworth@anu.edu.au>.

© 2021 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research,

Faculty of Business and Economics

Published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd