Sociodemographic, mental health, education, employment and income characteristics of adults with obsessive–compulsive disorder who accessed secondary health services in Aotearoa | New Zealand

Using the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), a national collection of linked health and non-health data, we explored the characteristics of working-age adults with OCD who had accessed public secondary health services in Aotearoa | New Zealand (NZ).There were marked differences in the rates of OCD for geographic areas corresponding to the regional divisions of Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora, and, as previously described, by ethnicity. These findings suggest inequity of access to healthcare and merit further investigation.In comparison to other working-age adults, people in the study cohort were moderately less likely to have achieved higher level educational qualifications, and they were markedly less likely to be employed and to belong to a higher income bracket.Accessing public secondary health services is likely to be a proxy for more severe and/or complex psychological disability and many people in this cohort had other mental health and related conditions. Therefore, the characteristics of this cohort cannot be generalised to the entire group of people who experience OCD in NZ.