Mental health disorder
Ethnic differences
There was some variation by ethnicity in the type of disorder that young people most commonly experienced.
Anxiety disorders are the most common disorder group among Pacific young people and young people of other ethnic groups (17.9 and 17.8 percent respectively) while substance use disorder was the most common disorder among Māori (17.5 percent) followed closely by anxiety disorders (17.2 percent).
Substance disorders are the only disorder group with statistically significant differences by ethnicity among those aged 16 to 24 years: Māori young people were significantly more likely than young people from other ethnic groups to be affected by a substance use disorder. Māori young people were also more likely to be affected by two or more disorders than young people from other ethnic groups.
| All % |
Māori % |
Pacific % |
Other % |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (95% CI) | (95% CI) | (95% CI) | (95% CI) | |
| Anxiety Disorders | 17.7 | 17.2 | 17.9 | 17.8 |
| (15.1, 20.6) | (13.2, 22.2) | (13.0, 24.3) | (14.6, 21.5) | |
| Mood Disorders | 12.7 | 13.4 | 10.3 | 12.2 |
| (10.4, 15.4) | (9.9, 17.8) | (6.3, 16.4) | (9.5, 15.6) | |
| Eating Disorders | 0.6 | 1.0 | 0.8 | 0.4 |
| (0.3, 1.0) | (0.3, 3.0) | (0.3, 2.4) | (0.2, 1.0) | |
| Substance Disorders | 9.6 | 17.5 | 7.9 | 7.6 |
| (7.9, 11.5) | (13.1, 23.0) | (4.9, 12.5) | (5.7, 10.2) | |
| Any disorder | 28.6 | 33.2 | 28.4 | 27.5 |
| (25.1, 32.3) | (27.0, 40.1) | (21.3, 36.7) | (23.4, 32.1) | |
| Severe Disorder | 7.2 | 8.6 | 8.2 | 6.8 |
| (5.7, 9.0) | (6.0, 12.3) | (4.9, 13.4) | (5.0, 9.0) | |
| 2 or more disorders | 16.6 | 23.0 | 14.7 | 15.3 |
| (14.3, 19.2) | (17.9, 29.0) | (10.4, 20.4) | (12.6, 18.4) |
Source: Te Rau Hinengaro, the New Zealand Mental Health Survey: Ministry of Health, 2004. Prioritised ethnicity data.
Note: “95%CI” (95 percent confidence interval) signifies that there is a 95 percent chance that the true value falls within this range. If the respective confidence intervals (in brackets) do not overlap, the difference between rates is likely to be statistically significant.
Notes
1. These ethnicity groupings differ to those used in some other health-related surveys. “Other” includes anyone who did not choose “Māori” or “Pacific” as one of the ethnicities with which they identified.
We encourage you to be cautious about drawing conclusions from comparisons between ethnic groups. Apparent differences (in unadjusted data) between ethnic groups can often be explained by factors other than ethnicity per se, such as the different age, sex, geographical and socioeconomic distributions of different ethnic populations. In addition, datasets vary in the way that they collect and record ethnicity data.
