Women's Health Issues
Volume 18, Issue 5 , Pages 399-405, September 2008

Australian Women Seeking Counseling Have Higher Use Of Health Services

  • Margot Schofield, MClinPsych, PhD

      Affiliations

    • School of Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
    • Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, Melbourne, Australia
    • Research Centre for Gender, Health and Ageing, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorrespondence to: Prof Margot Schofield, School of Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria 3086, Australia; Phone: 61 3 9479 3702; Fax: 61 3 9479 1783
    • ,
  • Asaduzzaman Khan, MScStats, MPH(Hons), PhD

      Affiliations

    • University of Queensland Social Research Centre, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
    • School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Received 2 March 2008; received in revised form 17 July 2008; accepted 17 July 2008.

Purpose

Despite a high prevalence of psychological distress and poor mental health in the Australian community, use of counseling services is very low. There has been only limited research examining the profile of those who do access counseling services, mainly in terms of demographic and health behavior variables. To extend our understanding of those who currently access counseling services, this study aimed to examine the broader pattern of health service utilization by women who consulted counselors, psychologists, or social workers in the past year compared with those who did not among a population-based sample of middle-aged Australian women, and to determine whether health service utilization was independently associated with use of counseling services, controlling for other known predictors.

Methods

The cross-sectional population-based mail survey data for this study came from the third survey of the mid-aged cohort of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, conducted in 2001. The sample comprised 11,201 women aged 50–55. The main study variable was a question asking whether they had consulted a counselor/psychologist/social worker in the past year.

Findings

Only 6.9% of women had consulted a counselor/psychologist/social worker in the past year. After controlling for self-reported mental health status, health behaviors and demographic variables in multivariate analysis, consulting a counselor/psychologist/social worker in the past year was significantly and positively associated with consultations with general practitioners (≥5 consultations; odds ratio [OR], 4.14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.35–7.27; p < .0001), specialist (≥3 consultations; OR, 2.09; 95% CI, 1.66–2.63; p < .0001), and hospital doctor (OR, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.10–1.66; p = .004). Use of counseling services was not associated with use of other allied and complementary health services in multivariate analyses.

Conclusions

Further research is needed to determine whether the strong independent link between self-reported use of counseling and other medical and health services among middle-aged women is best explained by general practice referral patterns, availability of services, economic factors, or different help-seeking patterns among women.

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 The research on which this paper is based was conducted as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, The University of Newcastle and The University of Queensland. We are grateful to the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing for funding and to the women who provided the survey data.

PII: S1049-3867(08)00100-X

doi:10.1016/j.whi.2008.07.005

Women's Health Issues
Volume 18, Issue 5 , Pages 399-405, September 2008

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