Health of veterans

While good health is a requirement for joining the Australian Defence Force (ADF), the experience of military service means current and ex-serving ADF members may have different health challenges compared to other Australians. This is why monitoring of the health and wellbeing of the ADF veteran population is important.

Key findings

Australia’s veteran population

According to the 2021 Census of Population and Housing, more than half a million Australians (581,000) have ever served in the ADF, representing 2.8% of Australians aged 15 and over. Around 84,900 (15%) are currently serving ADF members (60,300 permanent and 24,600 reservists), and over 496,000 (85%) are ex-serving (ABS 2022b).

The age and sex profile of veterans is different to non-veterans (Figure 1):

• Veterans are mostly male – 86% (497,000) compared with 48% of non-veterans aged 15 and over, while 14% (84,100) of veterans are female.
• Ex-serving members are an older population – 53% (263,000) are aged 65 and over, compared with 20% of non-veterans aged 15 and over (ABS 2022b).

This means that some health issues that are more common in males and older people will be more common in veterans compared with non-veterans.

Although veterans are often described like a single population, or as current serving and ex-serving populations, the people who make up the veteran population are diverse.  

First Nations veterans accounted for 2.5% (corresponding to 14,700) of all veterans. Among these, 11,900 were male (81%) and 2,800 were female (19%). Of all First Nations veterans, 11,600 (79%) were ex-serving while 3,100 (21%) were current serving ADF members. The proportion of First Nations permanent members has increased from 1.3% in June 2014 to 3.9% in June 2024, (ADF annual reports and AIHW 2025k).

There were 4,200 veterans living in a same-sex couple which was equivalent to 0.7% of all veterans. Most veterans in same-sex couples were female – 2,400 female compared with 1,800 male (AIHW 2025l).

Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds are relatively common among veterans with 14% (81,900) born overseas and 3.7% (21,200) using a language other than English at home. Most veterans who used a language other than English at home spoke a European language (9,600 or 1.7% of all veterans) or an Asian language (9,500 or 1.6%) and the remainder spoke an Indigenous or other language (2,200 or 0.4%) (AIHW 2025j).

Health status

Self-assessed health

In 2020–21, male veterans were less likely to rate their health as excellent or very good than males who had never served in the ADF (45% compared with 57%, respectively). This may be explained in part by the older age of Australia’s male veteran population (AIHW analysis of ABS 2023).

Long-term health conditions

In 2020–21, male veterans reported a higher prevalence of several long-term health conditions than male non-veterans (AIHW analysis of ABS 2023) (Figure 2). Similarly to self-assessed health, this may be explained by the older age of Australia’s male veteran population.

The prevalence of different long-term health conditions among male veterans was similar between veterans who were clients and/or beneficiaries of the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA), and non-DVA veterans (AIHW analysis of ABS 2023).

Mental health

Mental health conditions from the 2020–2022 National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing

In the 2020–2022 NSMHW, veterans were less likely to have reported a mental health disorder in the previous 12 months than non-veterans (17% compared with 22%, respectively). In particular, they were less likely to have reported an anxiety disorder in the previous 12 months (14% compared with 17%, respectively). Rates of affective disorders (7.7%) and substance use disorders (2.4%) among these veterans were similar to non-veterans (7.5% and 3.3%, respectively) (ABS 2022a).

Mental health conditions from the 2020–2021 National Health Survey

In the 2020–21 NHS, male veterans were more likely to report a current and long-term mental or behavioural condition than males in the non-veteran population (27% compared with 17%, respectively). In particular, they were nearly twice as likely (21%) to report having a long-term anxiety-related disorder compared with males in the non-veteran population (11%) (AIHW analysis of ABS 2023).

Mental health consultations

The 2020–2021 NSMHW showed that around 17% of all veterans had at least one mental health related consultation with a health professional in the previous 12 months. This was similar to people in the non-veteran population (17%) (AIHW analysis of ABS 2022a).

Self-harm and suicidal thoughts and behaviours

The 2020–2021 NSMHW found that around 6.4% of all veterans reported having self-harmed in their lifetime, compared with around 8.5% of non-veterans (AIHW analysis of ABS 2022a).

Rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviours over the lifetime were similar between veterans and non-veterans:

• 19% of all veterans and 16% of non-veterans had experienced suicidal thoughts.
• 8.6% of all veterans and 7.7% of non-veterans had made suicide plans.
• 7.8% of all veterans and 4.7% of non-veterans had attempted suicide (AIHW analysis of ABS 2022a).

However, this may not reflect the experiences of all sub-populations of Australia’s veterans.

Disability

According to self-reported data from the 2020–21 NHS, almost 2 in 5 (37%) male veterans had a disability with a limitation or restriction, while 1 in 5 (20%) had a disability but with no limitation or restriction. These proportions were around twice as high as non-veteran males (17% and 12%, respectively) (AIHW analysis of ABS 2022b).

Among the 496,000 ex-serving members aged 15 and over captured within the 2021 Census of Population and Housing, 13% need assistance with core activities including self-care, body movement and communication, due to a long-term health condition or disability (ABS 2022b). Ex-serving members who served in the regular forces were more likely to need assistance with core activities than non-veterans, regardless of age (Figure 3).

Health risk factors

According to the 2020–21 NHS, male veterans had similar risk factors for ill health compared with non-veteran males, including:

• daily smoking (11% of male veterans compared with 13% of non-veteran males)
• excessive alcohol consumption (40% compared with 33%)
• insufficient fruit consumption (55% for both)
• insufficient vegetable consumption (94% compared with 96%)
• insufficient physical activity (70% for both).

Male veterans were more likely to be overweight or obese than male non-veterans (75% compared with 61%) (AIHW analysis of ABS 2023), although the fact that the body-mass index (BMI) methodology does not distinguish between the weight of fat or muscle in an individual should be noted (Health Direct 2024).

Deaths

Between 1997 and 2023, there were 18,738 deaths among people with at least one day of ADF service since 1 January 1985. Of these 18,738 deaths:

• 16,984 (91%) occurred among ex-serving members
• 852 (4.5%) among permanent members
• 902 (4.8%) among reservists (AIHW 2025i).

Between 1997 and 2023, age-specific rates across all causes of death for permanent and reserve ADF members were lower than rates for ex-serving ADF members (Figure 4).

Age-specific rates across all causes of deaths for permanent, reserve, or ex-serving ADF males were lower than rates for all Australian males (Figure 4). The exception to this was for ex-serving males aged 17–29, where the rate was higher, and for ex-serving males aged 30–39, where the rate was similar.

Age-specific rates across all causes of death for permanent and reserve females were lower than rates for all Australian females between 1997 and 2023 (Figure 4). Ex-serving females and all Australian females had a similar rate for all causes of death in each age group. The exception was ex-serving females aged 50–70, where the rate was lower.

Leading causes of death

Leading causes of death is a useful measure of population health, especially when making comparisons between population groups. Figure 5 provides the leading causes of death in permanent, reserve, and ex-serving males and ex-serving females for 1997–2023 by age group, with the Australian comparison. Permanent and reserve females were not presented due to small numbers when disaggregated by age group.

Suicide was the leading cause of death for permanent, reserve, and ex-serving males, and all males in the Australian population aged under 40. For permanent males aged under 30 however, the leading cause was land transport accidents. For those aged 40–49, the leading cause of death for permanent and reserve males was coronary heart disease, and for ex-serving males and all Australian males, this was suicide. For those aged 50–70, the leading cause of death for all groups was coronary heart disease.

The leading cause of death for ex-serving females, and all females in the Australian population was death by suicide for those aged under 40. For those aged 40–49, the leading cause of death was suicide for ex-serving females and breast cancer for females in the Australian population. For females aged 50–70, the leading cause of death for all groups was lung cancer (AIHW 2025i).

Deaths by suicide

Between 1997 and 2023:

• males currently serving in the permanent or reserve forces were around half as likely to die by suicide as all Australian males
• ex-serving males were 25% more likely to die by suicide than all Australian males
• ex-serving females were almost twice as likely to die by suicide than all Australian females, but had a lower rate of suicide than ex-serving males.

The suicide rate for ex-serving males who separated involuntarily for medical reasons was almost three times the rate of those who separate voluntarily (61.3 compared with 21.9 per 100,000 population per year). However, the suicide rate for ex-serving females was statistically similar between those who separated involuntarily for medical reasons and those who separated voluntarily, when considering the small number of deaths by suicide in each group (AIHW 2025i).

For more information, see Serving and ex-serving Australian Defence Force members: suicide monitoring 1997 to 2023.

Health service use

There are many programs and services that support the health of veteran Australians. This section summarises health service use among ex-serving ADF members, focusing on in-scope services with available data: primary care services delivered under the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and those funded by DVA, prescriptions supplied under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (RPBS), admitted hospital care and emergency department (ED) care. Unless otherwise stated, all data in this section refers to ex-serving ADF members who served at least one day since 1 January 1985.

In 2019–20, 88% of ex-serving ADF members accessed at least one in-scope health service, broadly similar to the Australian population, with higher mental health service use among ex-serving members, likely reflecting differences in eligibility, access, engagement with care, underlying health conditions or due to the unique impacts of ADF service (AIHW 2025f). Ex-serving members more likely to access a health service at least once in 2019–20 were:

• females (90%) compared with males (88%)
• aged 65 years and older (95%) compared with those aged 17–24 years (82%)
• involuntarily medically separated (95%) compared with voluntarily separated (86%)
• DVA clients (94%) compared with non‑DVA clients (85%).

For more information, see Health service use among ex-serving ADF members.

Primary care

Primary care is often a person’s first interaction with the health system and includes services provided in the community by General practitioners (GPs), specialists and allied health professionals. Data in this section covers Medicare-subsidised primary care services and does not include services funded by DVA. 

General practitioners

GPs are part of the front line of Australia’s health care system. GPs treat a broad range of health issues and are often the first point of contact many people have with the health system. In 2019–20, 77% (175,300) of ex-serving ADF members had at least one GP attendance (AIHW 2025f).

Specialists

Specialists provide diagnostic and treatment services in a specific area of medicine, generally for a particular disease or body system, supporting patients to manage a wide range of health conditions. In 2019–20, 29% (65,600) of ex-serving ADF members had at least one specialist attendance (AIHW 2025f). 

Allied health professionals

Allied health services include care delivered by audiologists, chiropractors, diabetes educators, dietitians, exercise physiologists, occupational therapists, optometrists, orthoptists, osteopaths, physiotherapists, podiatrists, psychologists, social workers and speech pathologists. In 2019–20, 34% (76,600) of ex-serving ADF members had at least one allied health professionals’ attendance (AIHW 2025f). 

Medicines

In 2019–20, 69% (157,400) of ex-serving ADF members had at least one prescription dispensed under the PBS/RPBS, with an average of 15.1 dispensing’s per person across the whole ex-serving ADF cohort during that year (AIHW 2025f).

Hospitals

Hospitals play an important role in Australia’s health care system. Services are provided both to admitted patients and non-admitted patients (through outpatient clinics and emergency departments).

Emergency departments

Emergency departments (EDs) are an essential component of Australia’s health care system. Many of Australia’s public hospitals have purpose-built EDs, staffed 24 hours a day, providing care for patients who require urgent medical, surgical or other attention. In 2019–20, 15% (34,900) of ex-serving ADF members presented to a hospital ED (AIHW 2025f).

Hospitalisations

Admission to hospital is an administrative process that follows a doctor’s decision that a patient needs to be admitted for appropriate management or treatment of their condition, and/or for appropriate care or assessment of their needs. In 2019–20, 17% (38,000) of ex-serving ADF members were admitted to hospital (AIHW 2025f).

Reasons for hospital admission

The most common reasons for admission to public hospitals were similar for both ex-serving members and the total Australian population. The three most common reasons that ex-serving ADF members were admitted to public hospitals were symptoms and signs, injury and poisoning and digestive diseases (AIHW 2024).

Hospital care for mental health, self-harm and suicidal ideation

Of persons admitted to public hospital in 2019–20:

• a higher proportion of ex-serving ADF males were admitted for mental health-related care compared with all Australian males (8.1% and 6.6%, respectively).
• the proportion of ex-serving females who were admitted for mental health-related care was higher in comparison to admitted Australian females, but this was mainly driven by those aged 25–34 (7.4% and 4.9%, respectively) with similar trends for ex-serving and all Australian females in other age groups.

Between 2013 and 2020, almost 4,400 ex-serving ADF members presented to an emergency department for intentional self-harm or suicidal ideation. This was equivalent to 3.7% of all ex-serving ADF presentations to ED, higher than 2.8% which was recorded for all Australians. There were 3,600 (3.7%) ex-serving males and 770 (4.1%) ex-serving females who presented for self-harm or suicidal behaviour (AIHW 2024).

Health expenditure

Department of Veterans' Affairs health expenditure

In 2023–24, the DVA spent $3.2 billion on health, mostly on hospitals ($1.2 billion), primary health care ($0.9 billion) and referred medical services ($0.7 billion) (AIHW 2025e).

Note that DVA has changed their system for reporting health expenditure since 2020–21, which has some impacts on the time series of health spending in this report. Therefore, caution should be exercised when comparing results between years.

Total DVA spending grew by 4.1% in 2023–24 in real terms but over the last 10 years, spending has declined in some areas:

• public hospitals (decreased an average of 7.7% per year)
• private hospitals (decreased an average of 5.1% per year)
• primary health care (decreased an average of 3.7% per year)
• referred medical services (decreased an average of 2.2% per year)

Spending on other services, including patient transport services, aids and appliances, and administration has increased by 5.3%

Based on the number of people in the DVA treatment population (which includes all DVA Orange, Gold and White cardholders), DVA spent $10,893 on health per member of the treatment population in 2023–24, which is 8.5% higher than the health spending per person in the total Australian population ($10,037). This average health spending per member of the DVA treatment population peaked in 2014–15 and decreased over the period 2015–16 to 2022–23, then rose slightly by $121 per client (or 1.1%) in real terms in 2023–24.

This recent downward trend in the health spending per member of the DVA treatment population is due to the decline in the number of Veteran Gold Card Holders and increase in those of Veteran White Card Holders. DVA will pay for the hospital treatment costs for Veteran White Card holders for accepted conditions or conditions under non-liability health care whereas all hospital services that meet the clinical needs of Veteran Gold Card holders are paid by DVA (AIHW 2025e).

Defence health expenditure

In 2023–24, the Department of Defence (Joint Health Command) spent $666.0 million on health. This was an increase of 8.0% ($49.4 million) from 2022–23 in real terms. In descending order, the areas of spending were:

• other health practitioners ($232.6 million)
• referred medical services ($150.9 million)
• unreferred medical services ($111.7 million)
• private hospitals ($91.1 million)
• dental services ($40.9 million)
• all other medications ($11.4 million).

Veteran families

The overall health and wellbeing of the family is increasingly being recognised as important for the health and wellbeing of the individual veteran member. This section outlines demographic information on the children and spouses of veterans. For more information, see Characteristics and health conditions of children living with veteran parents and Characteristics and health conditions of civilian spouses of veterans. 

Children living with veteran parents

In the 2021 Census, 238,000 children were identified as living with 152,000 veteran parents, representing 3.5% of all children living with their parent(s) on Census night. Of the children who live with veteran parents, around 93% (222,000) had one veteran parent and just under 7% (15,900) had 2 veteran parents. Of those with one veteran parent, 81% (180,000) of children had an ex-serving parent, 12% (26,600) had a current serving permanent parent and 7% (15,400) had a current serving reserves parent (AIHW 2025b).

Civilian spouses of veterans  

In the 2021 Census, 315,000 civilians were identified as a spouse living with a veteran, representing 3.0% of all spouses living together on Census night. Among civilian spouses of veterans, 6.7% (21,000) were the spouse of a current serving permanent member, 3.9% (12,400) were the spouse of a current serving reserves member and 89% (281,300) were the spouse of an ex-serving member (AIHW 2025c).

Where do I go for more information?

• General – Veterans
• Profile of veterans
  • Service with the Australian Defence Force: Census
  • Department of Defence annual reports
  • DVA annual reports
• Families of veterans 
  • Children living with veteran parents
  • Civilian spouses of veterans
• Health status
  • National Heath Survey
• Social determinants of health
  • Wellbeing characteristics
  • Sources of income
  • Social connectedness
• Health risk factors
  • Smoking among Australia’s veterans 2020–21
• Mental health
  • National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing
  • Hospitalisation for suicidality and intentional self-harm
• Suicide
  • Serving and ex-serving Australian Defence Force members: suicide monitoring 1997 to 2023
• Health service use
  • Hospitalisation for suicidality and intentional self-harm
  • Health services use by ex-serving Australian Defence Force members
  • Admitted patients
  • Health expenditure Australia 2023–24

For more on this topic, visit Veterans.