Common mental health disorders in military veterans: a quantitative comparison using primary healthcare data

Introduction UK primary healthcare medical records contain codes that define factors such as diagnosis, demographics and military veteran status. This provides an opportunity to use primary healthcare data to identify military veterans’ clinical morbidity and compare these results with a non-veteran sample.

Methods This research aimed to scrutinise UK primary healthcare data to compare the incidence of the mental health disorders of depression, anxiety, alcohol misuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, self-harm and substance misuse in veterans and non-veterans. Data were provided by 13 primary healthcare practices in England. Anonymised information was received between October 2023 and January 2024 and analyses were stratified by age and the sex assigned at birth (sex).

Results In total, 5458 primary healthcare electronic records were examined comprising 2729 veterans and 2729 demographically matched non-veterans. Veteran rates of depression were 14.9% compared with 17.1% in non-veterans; anxiety 12.8% compared with 11.9%; alcohol misuse 12.3% compared with 10.9%; post-traumatic stress disorder 2.9% compared with 0.8%; self-harm 1.1% compared with 1% and substance misuse 0.5% compared with 0.4%. In the veteran group, 2.5% were coded as having problems associated with alcohol misuse compared with 1.4% in the non-veteran group. Female veterans have a higher prevalence of mental health disorders than their male counterparts.

Conclusions Veterans did not experience higher levels of mental health diagnosis apart from post-traumatic stress disorder. Veterans did experience statistically higher levels of problems associated with alcohol abuse such as dependency or physical issues such as alcoholic cirrhosis compared with non-veterans. Veterans were significantly less susceptible to depression.