Gwen Cherne AM
Board member, Gallipoli Medical Research
*This article discusses suicide, trauma and mental ill-health.*
When we talk about suicide prevention in the Defence and veteran community, we rightly focus on the people who serve or have served. We need to keep doing that.
But on World Suicide Prevention Day, we also need to recognise that the veteran may not be the only person in a veteran family who is struggling, experiencing suicidal distress or needing support.
Veteran families are often spoken about as part of the solution: notice the changes, ask the hard questions, support help-seeking, help someone through a crisis. That role matters. But family members are not simply a protective factor around the veteran. They may need support themselves.
In 2021, the Census identified 238,000 children, including adult children, living with a veteran parent[i], and 315,000 civilians living with a veteran spouse or partner.[ii] These are household counts. They do not capture adult children who have left home, partners living apart, former partners, parents, siblings or many bereaved family members.
Partners, children, adult children, and other family members can experience significant distress and suicidal thoughts or behaviour in their own right.
Long-running Australian research involving Vietnam-veteran families found an association between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veteran fathers and PTSD in their adult sons and daughters. Related research identified higher rates of some mental health conditions among those adult children, and elevated lifetime suicidal thoughts and behaviours among both veterans and their female partners compared with population benchmarks.[iii]
Vietnam-era families are the cohort Australia has followed for longest, which is why the evidence about them is the strongest we have. That is a reason to take it seriously, not a reason to treat it as history. The specific findings cannot be read straight across to today’s families, and they do not make harm inevitable for anyone. But what they establish is that the effects of service can reach the whole family and can last for decades.
More recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) data adds to that picture. Among people living with a veteran parent, 21 per cent reported a long-term health condition, compared with 17 per cent of those living with non-veteran parents. Long-term mental health conditions were reported by 8.3 per cent of people living with a veteran parent, compared with 5.8 per cent of those living with non-veteran parents.[i]
The AIHW cautions that these comparisons are descriptive and do not establish that ADF service caused the differences. But the wellbeing needs of veteran families are not merely anecdotal. They are visible in the data.
A child of a veteran does not stop being affected by military service when they turn 18. Yet the AIHW analysis could identify only people still living with a veteran parent. It therefore tells us little about adult children who have left home or about their longer-term experiences.[i]
Children can grow up in deeply loving families and still be affected by the consequences of service. Living in a household marked by PTSD, hypervigilance, withdrawal or emotional volatility can shape how a child understands safety, relationships and stress, and some effects may surface years into adulthood.
Nor does every pressure begin with a diagnosis.
Postings can disrupt schooling, friendships and a partner’s employment. Deployment can shift caring responsibilities. Injury and transition can unsettle identity, income and family relationships. These pressures can compound when families are repeatedly required to adapt.
The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide identified postings, return from deployment and transition as times of particular stress for families. It also recognised the effects of service life on employment, childcare and the wider family unit.[iv]
The effects of service can continue after someone leaves Defence, when a family separates, when children leave home or after an immediate crisis has passed.
Bereaved families sit inside this picture too. Often it was the veteran who connected a family to that community, and when they die that connection can go with them. The support that arrives in the first weeks rarely lasts as long as the grief. And a family no longer asked how the veteran is doing can stop being asked anything at all. People bereaved by suicide also face elevated risk themselves.
That is why we need to keep asking how the whole veteran family is going.
There is important work under way.
Open Arms provides eligible family members with free and confidential support, including individual, couple and family counselling.[v]
The Royal Commission called for fewer barriers to families accessing information and services, greater access to family therapy and services for partners and children, and more research into Defence and veteran family wellbeing.[iv]
The new Veteran and Family Wellbeing Agency, which commenced on 1 July 2026, has been established to strengthen prevention and early intervention and make support easier to find, navigate and coordinate.[vi] It is an important opportunity to look at veteran and family wellbeing more holistically.
These reforms matter. But the most important shift on World Suicide Prevention Day is also a human one.
We should not assume the veteran is the only person in a veteran family who may be struggling.
One person’s trauma, suicidal distress, injury, transition or grief can affect an entire household. At the same time, every person in that family has their own experiences, strengths, vulnerabilities and right to support.
The point is not to shift attention away from veterans. It is to widen the circle of concern.
Sometimes the most useful support is family-based. At other times, a partner, child or adult child may need confidential, independent support of their own.
Families can notice changes, encourage help-seeking and provide care and connection. But they are not clinicians or a permanent crisis service. No family member should be left carrying sole responsibility for keeping another person alive.
They should be supported to help someone they love while also being asked how they themselves are going.
Any family-based response must respect each person’s safety, privacy and consent. Sometimes it will be appropriate to support a family together. At other times, a family member will need separate and confidential care.
Prevention is not only clinical. It is also about the conditions that help people live well: connection, belonging, movement, routine, purpose and community.
For military children, belonging deserves particular attention. Frequent moves can mean starting again in another school, suburb, city or state. Sport can offer a ready-made community: a team, coaches, training nights, other parents on the sideline and people who know their name. Research associates organised sport with stronger self-esteem, belonging and social development, and lower symptoms of depression and anxiety, particularly where the environment is inclusive and socially supportive.[vii]
Sport will not suit every child, and it is not a treatment for suicidality or a replacement for professional care. For others, belonging may come through music, arts, culture, Scouts, volunteering or another community. What matters is having somewhere to go, something to look forward to and people who notice when you are not there. The same is true for adults. A club, a workplace, a neighbourhood or a friendship group can be another place to belong and another connection outside whatever may be happening at home.
When we ask who might be struggling within a veteran family, the answer will not always be obvious.
It may be the veteran.
It may be the partner supporting someone through repeated crises.
It may be the teenager who appears to be coping.
It may be a parent watching an adult son or daughter struggle.
It may be an adult son or daughter carrying the effects of childhood experiences into their twenties, thirties or beyond.
It may be someone still living with the consequences of a suicide years after the immediate support disappeared.
Sometimes more than one person in the same family is struggling at once.
So keep asking.
Ask the veteran. Ask their partner. Ask the children, in ways suited to their age. Keep asking as those children become adults.
And do not ask a family member only how the veteran is doing.
Ask them how they are.
Then listen, take the answer seriously and help them find support.
If we want to prevent suicide across the Defence and veteran community, we cannot define who matters only by who wore the uniform.
We need to see the whole family, throughout their lives.
Seeing the whole veteran family.
*If this piece raises concerns for you or someone you know, free and confidential support is available through Open Arms: Veterans & Families Counselling on 1800 011 046, or Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Both services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If life is in immediate danger, call Triple Zero on 000.*
References
[i] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2025), *Characteristics and health conditions of children living with veteran parents*.
[ii] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2025), *Characteristics and health conditions of civilian spouses of veterans*.
[iii] O’Toole, B.I. et al. (2017), “Intergenerational transmission of post-traumatic stress disorder in Australian Vietnam veterans’ families”, *Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica*, 135(5), 363–372; O’Toole, B.I. et al. (2018), “The mental health of sons and daughters of Australian Vietnam veterans”, *International Journal of Epidemiology*, 47(4), 1051–1059; O’Toole, B.I. et al. (2015), “Suicidality in Australian Vietnam veterans and their partners”, *Journal of Psychiatric Research*, 65, 30–36.
[iv] Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide (2024), *Final Report, Volume 6: Families, data and research, and establishing a new entity*, Chapter 27: Importance of families, Recommendation 103; Chapter 29: Use of data and research by Defence and DVA, Recommendation 121.
[v] Open Arms: Veterans & Families Counselling, *Eligibility* and *Counselling*.
[vi] Department of Veterans’ Affairs (2026), *New wellbeing agency opened on 1 July 2026*; Department of Veterans’ Affairs (2026), *What to expect from the Veteran and Family Wellbeing Agency*.
[vii] Wade, L. et al. (2026), “The impact of sports participation on psychological health and social outcomes in children and adolescents: a systematic review and update to the ‘Mental Health through Sport’ conceptual model”, *Systematic Reviews*, 15, article 121.
