Exploration of help-seeking by UK veterans with mental health difficulties has traditionally focused on barriers and facilitators to action. Comparatively little is known concerning referral patterns to specialist veteran mental health services.

To explore patterns of help-seeking over the decade to 2022 to a national specialist mental health service for UK military veterans.

A dataset was created from electronic patient records for referrals between 2012 and 2022. Data included demographics, dates of referral, military service details including service length and operational deployments.

The mean time taken for veterans to seek help after leaving service appeared to modestly increase, when compared to previous studies. This is contrary to predictions from previous studies and potentially driven by a cohort effect of older veterans continuing to take longer to seek support than their younger peers. Further, early service leavers took longer to seek help. Over the course of the decade, the proportion of veterans with experience of operations in Iraq and/or Afghanistan increased; these individuals appeared to seek help more quickly than veterans who had served on previous deployments. The proportion of female veterans seeking referral increased over time.

Although older veterans continue to present with mental health difficulties, those younger and with more recent deployment to Afghanistan are likely to represent the largest group seeking help in the coming years. These trends indicate that adequate specialist veteran mental health care provision is contingent on meeting the needs of veterans with a range of demographic and military profiles.