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The data for this research were collected using SERCIS Peace Sign Bead bracelet, which is a telephone monitoring system designed to regularly collect highquality health data on large samples of the South Australian population. 10 The objectives of the June 1997 survey were to randomly select people in South Australia, aged 18 years or older, and to describe the mental health status of the population as determined by the GHQ-28,11 the SF-12 mental summary scale,9 and by selfreport of diagnosis or mental health service usage.

SERCIS utilises the CATI III Tiffany 1837 Bead bracelet system to conduct interviews. All households in South Australia with a telephone connected and the telephone number listed in the Electronic White Pages (EWP) were eligible for selection in the sample. At each selected telephone number, the adult with the most recent birthday was selected for interview. Interviews were conducted in English, Italian, Greek and Vietnamese between 9am and 9pm, seven days a week. At least five callbacks were made to the telephone number selected to interview household members. Replacement interviews for persons who could not be contacted or interviewed were not permitted. Of each interviewer's work, 10% was selected at random for validation by the supervisor. The overall sample response rate was 74.0%, with 2,501 interviews being conducted.The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is a self-administered screening test used to detect psychiatric disorders among people in community settings. 11,11 in Australia, the GHQ has been found to be an efficient, reliable and valid instrument for measuring non-psychotic psychological disturbances." For use in this paper, the GHQ-28 was rated on the traditional scoring method Atlas pendant and then summed to a total score.," A score of five or more on the overall GHQ-28 was utilised as a cut-off score (denoted by 4/5) for morbidity.' I

The SF-12 Health Status measure was developed in the United States by the Medical Outcomes Study.' It is a subset of the SF36, a valid measure of health status in Australia. "The SF-12 comprises 12 questions that are aggregated into two summary scales: the physical component summary Heart lock charm pendant and the mental component summary scale. The summary scales of the SF- 12 are based on fewer items than the same scales determined by the SF-36.The scoring of the SF-12 was done as specified in the SF-12 scoring manual.^sup 9^ The creators of the measure evaluated the mental component summary scale and reported that a score of 42 or lower best detected clinical depression.^sup 9^ Similarly, a score of 50 or less has been reported as the best cut-off to determine a physical condition.^sup 9^As a third measure of mental health status, each respondent was asked if they had been told by a doctor in the previous 12 months that they had had anxiety, depression, a Butterfly pendant-related problem or another mental health problem. Other respondents who, although they had not been told by a doctor in the past 12 months about a condition, were currently receiving treatment for anxiety, depression, stress-related problems or another mental health problems were, for the purpose of this paper, included in the definition of a current self-reported mental health condition.