Bereaved Military Families: Young, Often Far From Support, and Little Studied

Outside wartime, most people who die while serving in the armed forces do not die in combat: in the UK, illness, accidents and suicide account for most deaths in service^[1]. The families they leave are often young, and many live far from military support^[2]. In the United States, where military health records have been studied, widows and children have markedly higher rates of depression, post-traumatic stress and related diagnoses in the two years after the death. Outside the US and Israel, the evidence on these families is close to absent.

When someone in the forces dies, their family is bereaved inside an institution as well as a household. There may be uniformed officers at the door, a military funeral, an inquiry or inquest and, often, a move out of service housing and away from the community that knew them. Families of veterans, people who have left the forces, may grieve without any of that, in civilian services that may not know the person served. This study sets out what research and official statistics worldwide show about bereaved military families: how their family members die, how the death affects spouses, children, parents and siblings, and what is known about support.

Outside major combat operations, most deaths in service are from illness, accidents and suicide

The UK Ministry of Defence publishes accredited official statistics on every death in the regular armed forces. In 2025, 60 serving personnel died, a rate of 43 per 100,000^[1]. Over the ten years from 2016 to 2025, cancers and suicide were each responsible for 25% of deaths, and other accidents for 16%. Two people died as a result of hostile action in that decade. Serving personnel were at a significantly lower risk of dying than the UK general population, which the Ministry says may be explained by the “healthy worker effect”, the tendency for people in work to be healthier than the population as a whole.

Recent suicide figures are provisional. Of the deaths in 2025, 11 were recorded as other accidents that may become suicide verdicts once a coroner’s inquest is held^[1]. For families, that means the official cause of a death can remain open for months.

In wartime the pattern changes, but not completely. In the United States, 15,938 service members died on active duty in the ten years from September 2001, the decade of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, from causes that included accidents, combat and illness^[2].

Suicide deaths do not stop when people leave the forces. The US Department of Veterans Affairs counted 6,398 veterans who died by suicide in 2023, a rate of 35.2 per 100,000^[5]. In 61.0% of those deaths the veteran had not received care from the veterans’ health system in that year or the year before. A UK study of a random sample of 145 veterans who left the forces between 2007 and 2018 and later took their own life found that relatively few (7%) had experienced trauma from deployment on combat operations, and that 97% had been in contact with support services^[6]. Unemployment, alcohol and drug use, ill health, and housing and relationship problems were common in the time before their deaths. Suicide is never the result of a single cause, and these findings suggest many points at which support could have reached people.

The families left behind are young, and many live far from military support

The people bereaved by deaths in service are often young. The only population-wide description of these families comes from the United States. Of the 15,938 service members who died on active duty between September 2001 and September 2011, 55% had a dependent spouse, and 56% of those spouses had children^[2]. The surviving spouses were, on average, 32.8 years old, and their children 10.3. Many were bereaved by a sudden and violent death.

In the same US study, 60% of spouses with children and 58% of spouses without children lived more than 60 miles from a military installation^[2]. For many families, then, the support available is civilian: family doctors, schools and community services that may have little experience of military life or of the circumstances of a service death.

We could not find comparable figures for any other country: how many spouses, children, parents and siblings are bereaved by military or veteran deaths each year does not appear to be published anywhere. For a related picture of raising children after a partner dies, see our study of widowed parents.

Widows’ and children’s mental health diagnoses rise after the death

Grief is a normal response to a death, not an illness, but some bereaved people develop diagnosable, treatable conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or prolonged grief disorder. The strongest evidence here comes from US studies of military health records, comparing families before and after a service member’s death with similar families who were not bereaved.

One study followed 1,375 wives of active-duty service members who died alongside 1,375 military wives matched on age, earlier use of health care, and their husband’s rank and deployment history, from a year before the death to two years after. Among the widows, bereavement was associated with a two- to fivefold increase in the prevalence of depression, PTSD and adjustment disorder after the death^[4]. The researchers note that military widows may be particularly vulnerable because they are younger and are more often bereaved by sudden and violent deaths. The rise in loss- and stress-related conditions continued beyond the first year. A second analysis of the same widows, covering 15 medical conditions, found greater increases in mental health conditions and in “ill-defined” physical symptoms in the first and second years after the death, and more use of health care^[7].

Children show a similar pattern. Among 1,212 children whose active-duty father died between 2001 and 2006, compared with 1,212 matched children, rates of depressive and adjustment disorders were 2 to 4 times higher one and two years after the death^[3]. Rates of acute stress disorder or PTSD were 9.5 times higher in the first year. Both boys and girls were affected, and school-age children had higher rates of trauma-related diagnoses than adolescents in that first year.

These are diagnoses recorded in medical records, so they reflect who sought and received care as well as who was unwell; families who did not use military health care, or who were never diagnosed, are not counted. The studies show an association after matching on some characteristics, not proof that the death alone caused every diagnosis. They do show a measurable rise in need over the two years after a death. More on children’s outcomes after a parent dies is in our library on school attainment after a parent’s death.

How a person died shapes the grief, and suicide loss reaches far beyond the family

Military families are bereaved by combat, accidents, illness, homicide and suicide, and the cause matters. In a US survey of family members bereaved by the suicide, accidental death or combat death of someone in the military, deaths by accident and by suicide each had independent effects on grief severity compared with combat deaths^[8]. The same group of researchers, working with 1,732 family members bereaved by a US military service death, found that the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 guidance for diagnosing prolonged grief disorder worked well in this population^[9], which matters for services trying to tell persistent, impairing grief apart from the normal pain of grief.

Evidence from Israel also finds that the circumstances of a death matter. In a study of 159 bereaved siblings, those whose brother or sister died in civilian circumstances had the highest prevalence of complicated grief, compared with siblings bereaved by military service or terrorism; PTSD levels did not differ significantly between the groups^[10]. An older Israeli cohort study followed the parents of all 2,518 soldiers aged 18 to 40 killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Overall, these parents had no excess mortality compared with the Jewish Israeli population (standardised mortality ratios of 0.91 for fathers and 0.90 for mothers, neither significantly different from 1), but widowed and divorced parents whose son had died did have higher mortality, significantly so for mothers^[11]. Our study of parents whose child has died covers the wider evidence.

When a service member or veteran dies by suicide, the people affected include colleagues and comrades as well as family. In a psychological autopsy study of US Army soldiers who died by suicide, 30% of next of kin and 50% of supervisors had not seen any signs of risk beforehand^[12]. In a random-sample survey of 931 veterans in Kentucky in 2012–13, 47.1% had known someone who died by suicide^[13]. Those exposed had 1.92 times the odds of diagnosable depression and 2.37 times the odds of diagnosable anxiety; feeling closer to the person who died more than doubled the odds of prolonged grief (odds ratio 2.47). Among 971 National Guard personnel in Utah and Idaho, 65.4% knew someone who had died by suicide, on average 3.0 people each^[14]. These are surveys of single US states, and they measure association, not cause. Interviews with 38 US veterans exposed to a colleague’s suicide found that the military’s official response to the death had long-term effects on them^[15]. Our study of adults bereaved by suicide sets out the wider evidence.

Peer support is widely used, but there is little evidence on what works

Much support for bereaved military families is built around peer support: people bereaved in similar circumstances supporting those newer to it. Clinicians have observed that peer support is widely used by people bereaved by suicide, and US researchers have described particular issues that come with a military suicide loss^[16]. In a survey of 691 people taking part in TAPS, a US peer support organisation for families bereaved by military deaths, peer mentors reported more post-traumatic growth and better psychological health than people who were not mentors, and active involvement predicted growth; the authors’ further analyses suggested that people bereaved by suicide benefited more from active participation than those bereaved by other causes^[17]. Participants chose to take part, so this cannot show that the programme caused the difference.

Systematic searches find very little beyond that. A 2025 scoping review of support after military suicide found only five studies; peer support groups were a promising approach, but the review found “a substantial gap in the research on military suicide postvention strategies”^[18]. A review of loneliness and social isolation among military widows and widowers found nine eligible papers, all from the USA and Israel, and none that included the views of widowers^[19]. It concluded that the evidence supports military-specific support with peers who recognise these experiences. Canadian researchers argue that military and veteran families “remain obscured in suicide-prevention research and practice”^[20].

The gap is widest where the need may be greatest. Quantitative research on bereaved families of soldiers in low- and middle-income countries, and in the wars of recent years, is scarce. One rare study, from Kandahar in Afghanistan in 2023, found depression symptoms in 57.9% and anxiety symptoms in 61.5% of war widows attending community health centres, with differences by household income and social support^[21]. It covers women widowed by four decades of conflict, not only the widows of soldiers, and a clinic sample, so it cannot be generalised. Separately, the evidence on money and work after a military death, a central concern for young widowed families, is almost entirely missing from the research literature we could find.

What the evidence asks of us

The research is thin, but where it exists it points in a consistent direction.

• Monitor and follow up, not just notify. US researchers who documented widows’ rising mental health and physical symptoms called for “proactive health monitoring of all military widows”, including those who may not seek treatment^[7], and for access to services that can properly identify and treat loss-related conditions^[4]. The rise in children’s trauma-related diagnoses in the first year, highest among school-age children, suggests that schools and children’s services need to know when a pupil’s parent has died in service^[3].
• Reach families where they live. With most US surviving families living more than 60 miles from a military installation^[2], support that depends on being near a base will miss many of them. Civilian GPs, schools, bereavement services and veterans’ services are likely to be where many of these families seek help.
• Treat suicide postvention as part of suicide prevention. Exposure to suicide is common among veterans and service personnel and is associated with depression, anxiety and prolonged grief^[13][14]. Support after a death, for families, colleagues and comrades, should be planned in advance and shaped by people with lived experience^[15].
• Fund research outside the US, and include everyone. Reviews found studies only from the USA and Israel, none including widowers^[19], and very few testing any intervention^[18]. Defence ministries that already publish deaths in service^[1] could also report, in anonymised form, how many spouses, children and parents are bereaved, so that services can be planned to the scale of need.

Language: this piece uses plain words such as “died” rather than euphemisms, because they are clearer. “Military families” here means the spouses, partners, children, parents and siblings of serving personnel and veterans; “veterans” means people who have left the armed forces, as the US and UK sources use the term. Where it discusses suicide, it follows the Samaritans’ media guidelines.

Why we're publishing this

Families bereaved through military service are often honoured in public and overlooked in research. The organisations that support them need evidence they can cite when they argue for services that reach families after the funeral and the ceremony. This study brings together what is known, from any country, and says plainly where nothing is known. The case it makes is theirs: these families have measurable needs that last well beyond the first year, and support should be designed around where and how they live.

How to read this data

The figures on deaths are official counts: the UK Ministry of Defence’s accredited official statistics on deaths in the regular armed forces (2016–2025), and the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ national count of veteran suicides (to 2023). Recent UK suicide figures are provisional until inquests conclude. The figures on families’ health come mainly from US case-control studies using military health records: they match bereaved and non-bereaved families on some characteristics, measure diagnoses rather than symptoms, and only include families using military health care. The suicide-exposure figures come from surveys in single US states and show association, not cause. The TAPS study is of self-selected participants in one programme. The Israeli parents’ study dates from deaths in 1973. We found no published count, for any country, of how many family members are bereaved by military deaths each year, and very little evidence from outside the United States and Israel.

Use this data

Free to cite with attribution to Understanding Bereavement. Charities, services, researchers and journalists are welcome to reuse these figures and charts. For the underlying figures as a spreadsheet, get in touch.

Important: This study summarises published research about groups of people for general information. It is not medical advice or bereavement support, and it cannot describe or predict anything about an individual or family. If you are worried about yourself or someone close to you, please speak to a GP or another qualified professional.

Sources

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2. Cozza SJ, Fisher JE, Zhou J, et al. Bereaved military dependent spouses and children: those left behind in a decade of war (2001–2011). Military Medicine, 2017. europepmc.org/article/MED/28290943
3. Ogle CM, Rice AJ, Zhou J, Fisher JE, Hisle-Gorman E, Cozza SJ. Mental health diagnoses in bereaved children following loss of active-duty service member fathers in 2001–2006: a case-control study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2026. europepmc.org/article/MED/41921819
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