Statistical register of Western Australia for ... and previous years.

Imprint varies.

Type of housing predicts rate of readmission to hospital but not length of stay in people with schizophrenia on the Gold Coast in Queensland

Accommodation is considered to be important by institutions interested in mental health care both in Australia and internationally. Some authorities assert that no component of a community mental health system is more important than decent affordable housing. Unfortunately there has been little research in Australia into the consequences of discharging people with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia to different types of accommodation. This paper uses archival data to investigate the outcomes for people with schizophrenia discharged to two types of accommodation. The types of accommodation chosen are the person's own home and for-profit boarding house. These two were chosen because the literature suggests that they are respectively the most and least desirable types of accommodation. Results suggest that people with schizophrenia who were discharged to boarding houses are significantly more likely to be readmitted to the psychiatric unit of Gold Coast Hospital although their length of stay in hospital is not significantly different. (author abstract)

Managerialism and Public Housing Reform

This paper discusses market inspired changes to the delivery of public housing in Queensland, Australia during the late 1990s. These policy changes were implemented in an organisational environment dominated by managerialism. The theory and method of critical discourse analysis is used to examine how managerial subject positions were assimilated and/or creatively resisted by different actors within the public housing policy community. These themes are discussed using interview data with a range of policy actors, including policy managers, front-line housing staff and public housing tenants. The analysis suggests that policy actors who openly challenged the emerging policy and organisational direction were marginalised in changing power relations.

Stakeholder concerns about Australia's mental health care system

There is growing community and professional concern that the Australian mental health care system requires substantial reform. In response to these concerns, a Senate Select Committee on Mental Health has been commissioned to conduct an inquiry into the provision of mental health services. The current study involved a content analysis of 725 submissions received by the Committee, and highlighted significant areas for reform. People with mental illness face difficulties in accessing mental health care, the care they do receive is of varying quality and poorly coordinated, and necessary services from other sectors, such as housing, are lacking. These problems may be exacerbated for particular groups with complex needs or heightened levels of vulnerability. The system requires reorienting towards the consumers and carers it is designed to serve, and needs stronger governance, higher levels of accountability and improved monitoring of quality. These findings are discussed in the context of the recent acknowledgement of mental health as an issue by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), which has called for an action plan to be prepared for its consideration by June 2006.

Lairds of suburbia: Scottish migrant settlement and housing in Australian cities, 1880-1930

Drawing on decennial population statistics from 1881 to 1933, this article evaluates the settlement patterns of Scottish migrants in Australian cities. It considers the urban nature of Scottish settlement, and argues that settlement patterns were associated with employment opportunities for working-class Scots, along with various housing, lifestyle, and religious preferences, often grounded in pre-migration experiences of city living. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that Scottish migrants in Australia at the turn of the twentieth century largely belonged to an urban industrial working class, and provides a useful correction to the traditional images of Scots in Australia as mostly rural, well-off, and conservative migrants.

Housing tenure and affordability and mental health following disability acquisition in adulthood

Acquiring a disability in adulthood is associated with a reduction in mental health and access to secure and affordable housing is associated with better mental health. We hypothesised that the association between acquisition of disability and mental health is modified by housing tenure and affordability. We used twelve annual waves of data (2001-2012) (1913 participants, 13,037 observations) from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. Eligible participants reported at least two consecutive waves of disability preceded by two consecutive waves without disability. Effect measure modification, on the additive scale, was tested in three fixed-effects linear regression models (which remove time-invariant confounding) which included a cross-product term between disability and prior housing circumstances: housing tenure by disability; housing affordability by disability and, in a sub-sample (896 participants 5913 observations) with housing costs, tenure/affordability by disability. The outcome was the continuous mental component summary (MCS) of SF-36. Models adjusted for time-varying confounders. There was statistical evidence that prior housing modified the effect of disability acquisition on mental health. Our findings suggested that those in affordable housing had a -1.7 point deterioration in MCS (95% CI -2.1, -1.3) following disability acquisition and those in unaffordable housing had a -4.2 point reduction (95% CI -5.2, -1.4). Among people with housing costs, the largest declines in MCS were for people with unaffordable mortgages (-5.3, 95% CI -8.8, -1.9) and private renters in unaffordable housing (-4.0, 95% CI -6.3, -1.6), compared to a -1.4 reduction (95% CI -2.1, -0.7) for mortgagors in affordable housing. In sum, we used causally-robust fixed-effects regression and showed that deterioration in mental health following disability acquisition is modified by prior housing circumstance with the largest negative associations found for those in unaffordable housing. Future research should test whether providing secure, affordable housing when people acquire a disability prevents deterioration in mental health.