RESEARCH REPORT
Investigating the mental health of children exposed to domestic and family violence through the use of linked police data and health records
Every child deserves the right to grow up in a safe and healthy environment. When children experience domestic and family violence (DFV), it disrupts that right and can have long-lasting impacts on their health and wellbeing. Despite the importance of understanding children and young people’s experiences of DFV, our knowledge is often negatively impacted by common research limitations like small sample sizes, selective recruitment techniques and short study durations.
This report sheds new light on DFV and children’s mental health, presenting findings from a population-based retrospective cohort study of children born in Western Australia between 1987 and 2010. The study uses police and health records to follow children from birth to 18 to explore the connection between exposure to DFV in childhood and mental health service contact and the diagnosis of mental health disorders. The study compared a group of 16,356 children who had been exposed to DFV to a larger group of 41,996 children who had no recorded experience of DFV.
The study found that children who had been exposed to DFV were almost five times more likely to use a mental health service by the time they turned 18 than children who had not experienced DFV.
On average, children were aged 6 when police or health recorded there was DFV in their home, but they only received a health service around the age of 12.
Researchers were also able to identify an increased risk in 8 out of 10 mental health disorder diagnoses for children who had been exposed to DFV, including double the likelihood of substance use disorder compared to children who had not been exposed to DFV.
Publication details
This work is part of the ANROWS research reports series. ANROWS research reports are in-depth reports on empirical research produced under ANROWS’s Research Program.
Authors
DR CAROL ORR
Research Fellow, The School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia
SCOTT SIMS
Biostatistician, The School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia
PROFESSOR COLLEEN FISHER
Head of School, The School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MELISSA O’DONNELL
Deputy Director, Australian Centre for Child Protection, The University of South Australia
PROFESSOR DAVID PREEN
Chair in Public Health, The School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR REBECCA GLAUERT
Principal Research Fellow, The School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia
PROFESSOR HELEN MILROY
Stan Perron Professor Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Perth Children’s Hospital and The University of Western Australia
DR SHAE GARWOOD
Manager, Research, Advocacy & Prevention Innovation & Strategy, Anglicare Western Australia
ISBN: 978-1-922645-34-0 (print) | 978-1-922645-35-7 (online)
103 pp
Suggested citation
Orr, C., Sims, S., Fisher, C., O’Donnell, M., Preen, D., Glauert, R., Milroy, H., & Garwood, S. (2022). Investigating the mental health of children exposed to domestic and family violence through the use of linked police and health records (Research report, 10/2022). ANROWS.