Serving and ex-serving Australian Defence Force members who have served since 1985: suicide monitoring 1997 to 2020

The reasons that ADF members separate from the ADF can be categorised into four broad groups:

• Voluntary separation
• Involuntary separation for reasons other than medical (referred to as other involuntary separation)
• Involuntary medical separation
• Contractual or administrative change.

The separation date used in this report is when a member leaves the ADF entirely, that is when they are no longer a permanent or reserve member. Separation reason is therefore the reason recorded for leaving their last engagement with the ADF.

Due to a change in the way the reason for separating the ADF was recorded in 2002, analysis is presently only reported for ADF members who separated from 1 January 2003 onwards. These members comprise 41% of the ex-serving cohort. Among this cohort:

• The most common type of reason for separation was voluntary separation, with the similar proportions for males and females (44.8% and 44.4% respectively).
• This was followed by other involuntary separation (males 30.4% and females 23.9%).
• Next was involuntary medical separation (males 14.6% and females 17.9%).
• For contractual or administrative changes these accounted for 10.3% of male separations, and 13.8% of female separations.

Between 2003 and 2020, the suicide rate for ex-serving males by reason for separation was lowest for those who separated either voluntarily or for contractual/administrative reasons (22.5 and 18.6 per 100,000 population per year respectively) and highest for those whose reason for separation was involuntary medical (69.8 per 100,000 population per year). It should be noted that there was no statistical difference between the voluntary, other involuntary, and contractual/admin groups.

This is demonstrated in Table 7 below.

Note:

1. Due to a change in the way the reasons for separating the ADF was recorded during 2002, analysis is presented only for ADF members who left from 1 January 2003 onwards. These members comprise 41% of the total ex-serving members with at least 1 day of service since 1 January 1985.

Source: AIHW analysis of linked Defence historical personnel data–PMKeyS–NDI data 1985–2020.

Figure 10: Suicide rates by reason for separation, ex-serving males, 2003–2020

Source: AIHW analysis of linked Defence historical personnel data–PMKeyS–NDI data 1985–2020.

The age-adjusted analysis for the male voluntary and contractual/administrative separation cohorts indicates that there is no statistical difference in suicide rate between these cohorts and the Australian population. Similar analyses indicate that the involuntary separation cohorts have a higher rate of suicide than the Australian population, as seen in supplementary table S3.1.

Further work is underway to investigate the feasibility of comparing rates of suicide between the involuntary medical separation cohort and other appropriate alternative populations, such as people with similar medical conditions.

Between 2003 and 2020, the suicide rates for ex-serving females by reason for separation were statistically similar for voluntary separation, involuntary medical separation, and other involuntary separation (18.3, 25.8, and 16.9 per 100,000 population per year respectively).

Since there were no suicide deaths among ex-serving females who separated for contractual or administrative reasons this column does not appear in Figure 11 below. The wide confidence intervals due to low numbers make it difficult to comment with any more certainty.

Figure 11: Suicide rates by reason for separation, ex-serving females, 2003–2020

Source: AIHW analysis of linked Defence historical personnel data–PMKeyS–NDI data 1985–2020.

Due to the shortened period of usable data and overall low numbers the time series graphs for reason for separation will not be presented. Since these values are all statistically similar there are no comparisons given here with the Australian female population. The SMR for the overall ex-serving female cohort is given in the Suicide by sex and service status group section.

Data underlying these graphs are available in supplementary table S4.1 and 4.2 See Data for a link to the tables.

Please note, data for more recent years are subject to change; see the Technical notes for further detail.