Serving and ex-serving Australian Defence Force members who have served since 1985: suicide monitoring 1997 to 2022

Deaths

Deaths by suicide are a cause of death among other causes of death including natural diseases or other external causes. To place deaths by suicide in the context of other causes of death more broadly, this chapter presents information on the number and rates of death by any cause among Australian Defence Force (ADF) members and the leading causes of death.

Between 1997 and 2022, there were 17,217 deaths among people with at least one day of ADF service since 1 January 1985. Of these, around 15,508 (90%) occurred among ex-serving members, almost 831 (4.8%) among permanent members and 878 (5.1%) among Reservists.

Between 1997 and 2022, age-specific rates across all causes of death for permanent and reserve ADF members were lower than rates for ex-serving ADF members (Figure 2.1 and 2.2). 

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 2.1). The exception to this was for ex-serving males aged under 30, 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 (Figure 2.2). Compared with all Australian females, ex-serving females:

• aged under 30 had a higher rate across all causes of death
• aged 30–39 had a similar rate
• aged 40-49 had a similar rate
• aged 50-70 had a lower rate.

Figure 2: Rates of all causes of death by sex and age group for ADF members and all Australians, 1997–2022

Leading causes of death

Table 1 provides the leading causes of death in permanent, reserve, and ex-serving males and ex-serving females for 1997–2022 by age group, with the Australian comparison. Permanent and reserve females were not presented due to small numbers when disaggregated by age group. For the top 5 leading causes of death, see Supplementary tables S2.5 to S2.7.

For permanent, reserve, and ex-serving males, and all males in the Australian population aged under 50, the leading cause of death was suicide, except for permanent males aged under 30 where the leading cause was land transport accidents. 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.

Table 1: Leading causes of death among ADF members and all Australians, by sex, age group and service status, 1997–2022

Data underlying this section are available in Supplementary tables S2.1 to 2.7. See Data for a link to the tables.

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