Data gaps and future work
This report has examined hospital admissions and ED presentations for conditions associated with suicidality and self-harm among ex-serving ADF members, across the period 2010 to 2020. This has been the first time that data has been available to analyse admitted patient care and ED use for these conditions for all ex-serving ADF members.
However, the analysis of this data is still subject to some limitations due to gaps in data availability. For example, ED data was not suitable for analysis for the financial years 2010–11 to 2012–13 due to inadequate diagnostic information and ex-serving members were only in scope if they had served from January 1985 onwards (as noted in the Data limitations and Technical notes section).
Due to the wealth of information available in the analysis datasets, AIHW will continue to conduct research using this data. This report represents the first phase of the AIHW’s project aiming to understand health service use for conditions associated with suicidal behaviour among ex-serving ADF members.
In the second phase of this project, further analysis of hospitalisations will be conducted alongside analysis of other health care services, including health care provided under Medicare Benefits Scheme (MBS) and prescribing under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (RPBS). This will complement the hospitals analysis conducted in this report and will include modelling to help understand patterns and factors associated with healthcare services use among ex-serving ADF members, particularly mental health services.
While the second phase will provide additional insights, there remain gaps in the data relating to health service use among ex-serving ADF members. As noted earlier, there are extensive data gaps relating to private hospital use. Another example is the use of community mental health care services which were not included in this report. These services often treat mental health conditions in specialised community and hospital-based outpatient psychiatric services provided by state and territory governments.
Another challenge, as discussed throughout the report, is that there are current limitations across some health services data sources in the collection of data on intentional self-harm and suicidality. The AIHW is working with key stakeholders including mental health services and emergency data custodians to develop nationally consistent suicide-related data.