Australia's Mental Health Check Up

Learning about mental health conditions with insurance data

It is clear that mental health continues to be critical for Australians’ ability to work.

Mental health issues may influence people’s emotional and physical health, and therefore impact productivity and financial stability, whilst being a factor in wellbeing.

Insurance data presents a unique, real-world perspective on all mental health conditions. The underlying data allows us to better understand community impacts with far greater clarity.

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Australia's Mental Health Check Up (November 2024)

Council of Australian Life Insurers and KPMG Life Insurance – Industry Data Collection 2013–2022

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Australia's mental health across demographics

10 year growth rate

On average, the proportion of insured Australians who are permanently disabled due to a mental health condition has more than doubled since 2014.

White collar vs blue collar

White collar workers are 7% more likely to be permanently disabled and 14% more likely to be temporarily disabled due to mental health conditions than blue collar workers.

In the 30-40 age group

There has been a 31.4% increase in the temporary disability claims rate, with a 730% increase in the permanent disability claims rate since 2014.

Gender discrepancies

Men and women are equally likely to be temporarily disabled, but men are 59% more likely to be permanently disabled due to mental health conditions.

Using insurance data: understanding the approach

This industry data used for the research was assembled from multiple datasets, collected by KPMG over the 2013 (or 2014) to 2022 period. There were 10,218 mental health claims identified in the industry data.

As part of our research, we also considered population incidence of mental health and mental health claims paid through worker’s compensation insurance as compiled by Safe Work Australia. The data we used was obtained from the following public sources: