Characteristics of serving and ex-serving ADF members who have not yet or not recently interacted with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs

Web report

Last updated: 28 Oct 2025

Topic: Veterans

AIHW (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) (2025) Characteristics of serving and ex-serving ADF members who have not yet or not recently interacted with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, AIHW, Australian Government, accessed 26 June 2026.

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What do we know about non-DVA clients?

AIHW has analysed Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) clients as a subpopulation of veterans (or sometimes just ex-serving ADF members) in its previous research to provide insights to DVA on the characteristics, health, and welfare of its clients. In doing so, AIHW has compared DVA clients with non-DVA clients to contextualise the characteristics and health of DVA clients. This section presents findings from this previous research.

All analysis of non-DVA clients in this research is based on two important data limitations:

Veterans only include people who have served since 1 January 1985 due to limitations in Defence personnel data. Therefore, veterans with service ending before 1985 are not included in this analysis.
This research included limited DVA client data prior to 2002 and no DVA data prior to 1985 because of the previous mentioned limitation. Many veterans who only had interactions with DVA prior to 2002 are not included in the DVA client cohorts.

Figure 1 shows a matrix of the proportion of veterans who are non-DVA clients, earlier DVA clients and recent DVA clients.

Figure 1: Veterans who served since 1985 by non-DVA client and DVA client type

This is a matrix showing the proportion of veterans who are non-DVA clients, earlier DVA clients and recent DVA clients.

Note: data on DVA clients is available from 1985. DVA clients are the sum of recent and earlier DVA clients. AIHW acknowledges that there may be many veterans who only had interactions with DVA prior to 1985 who are not included in this analysis.

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Caution: Some readers may find parts of this content confronting or distressing

Please carefully consider your needs when reading the following information. This report contains information and statistics on suicidality and self-harm of ex-serving ADF members.

If this material raises concerns for you, support is available. Please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, or Defence All-hours Support Line on 1800 628 036, or Open Arms - Veterans and Families Counselling, available free of charge, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or see other ways you can seek help. Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling provides free, confidential military-aware mental health and wellbeing support. Available 24/7 to anyone who has served one day of continuous full-time service in the ADF and their immediate families.

The information included here places an emphasis on data, and as such, can appear to depersonalise the pain and loss behind the statistics. The AIHW respectfully acknowledges the individuals, families and communities affected by ADF member and veteran suicide or intentional self-harm each year in Australia.

The AIHW supports the use of the Mindframe guidelines on responsible, accurate and safe suicide and self-harm reporting. Please consider these guidelines when reporting on statistics on the monitoring of suicide and self-harm.

Characteristics of serving and ex-serving ADF members who have not yet or not recently interacted with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs

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What do we know about non-DVA clients?

Figure 1: Veterans who served since 1985 by non-DVA client and DVA client type

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