If there’s one common experience for many veterans and service members who served after 9/11, it’s watching people they served with die by suicide or go through mental distress at an almost never-ending rate. It’s hard to explain how it feels to be in my early 30s and have so many people I know be dead by their own hands, and for most of these deaths to come after the conflict we served together in.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for service members and post-9/11 veterans. There are costs to military service — some inflicted by conflict and others by the very people who were supposed to be allies in arms or even service members’ own leaders. Many of these costs are invisible wounds that kill for decades after a veteran leaves service.
Although Memorial Day is often focused on remembering those fallen in combat, it should be for all those who died in uniform, no matter the cause. This day also should be a moment for the nation and the military to work toward preventing more deaths in the future.
In 2021, research found that 30,177 active-duty personnel and veterans who served in the military after 9/11 have died by suicide, an average of 1,500 a year, compared with 7,057 service members killed in combat in the same period. My unit lost one person during our deployment to Iraq in 2016. Since then, we’ve lost at least six to suicide. This isn’t even counting those who made an attempt to die by suicide.
Department of Defense leaders have repeatedly tried to shift blame for suicide numbers and rates toward individual service members — noting relationship factors, excessive debt, administrative and legal difficulties, or lack of coping skills as risks. Very rarely does the military blame its practices that create overwhelming stress through poor leadership and issues such as racism, sexual assault and brain injuries. The military also often stigmatizes mental health treatment, all while not providing a clear picture of the problem to those who would attempt to help solve it.
The military says suicide rates are comparable to the national population; this appears to be misleading. As part of my work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I decided to analyze the data. What I found indicates the military itself is a key cause of suicide rather than the failures of individuals.
Last year, the Pentagon had an active-duty suicide rate that tied for the highest suicide rate in the history of the U.S. military. Men in the military in 2022 had a suicide rate that was 22% higher than all American men. Women had a rate that was almost 70% higher than their civilian counterparts. The suicide risk among service members and veterans of Asian American and Pacific Islander descent was 350% higher than the national average, and for Black and Latino veterans and military members, it was twice the national average.
Last year, Congress called for the Pentagon to produce a report with data that covered the suicide numbers and rates for all military occupational specialties for the past 20 years. So far, the Defense Department has not produced the data, even though it was due in December and it would help policymakers understand the role that factors such as blast exposure from American troops’ own weapons play in suicide. Based on data from 2019 to 2021 that was released in March and data released in 2010, military members in job fields that see occupational blast exposure, such as artillery personnel and combat engineers, have higher rates of suicide compared with those in the job fields that don’t. However, this data is still incomplete.
Other institutional issues abound. It shouldn’t take an act of Congress for the Defense Department to update its own suicide prevention resources online, but there was text introduced in last year’s defense bill that would force the Defense Department to update its resources and report to Congress annually. I checked some military suicide prevention websites recently, and they were still out of date.
For over a decade, the Defense Department has requested more funding and received more than $1 billion to take action on the issue. But perhaps the issue can’t be solved by money. According to a report released in 2023, the Defense Department’s Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee chiefly suggested that to reduce suicide rates, the military should revamp its promotion system and how it selects leaders.
Perhaps leaders in the military should be evaluated and promoted based on the work they’ve done to reduce suicides in their units. Just like how the military tracks the loss of equipment by commanders, losing human beings should also be a consideration in determining if someone is fit to be promoted.
Suicide prevention in the military and in veterans should truly become a priority. At the very least, basic tasks such as ensuring suicide prevention sites are up to date and congressionally mandated reports are produced on time should be completed.
More than 1,000 service members will continue to die by suicide each year if we don’t take decisive action now.
If you or a loved one is experiencing mental health difficulties, help is available. Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. NAMI Chicago can connect you with local resources at 833-626-4244.
Daniel Johnson is a Roy H. Park doctoral fellow studying media and communication at the Hussman School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a journalist in the Army in Iraq in 2016.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.