U.S. Army soldiers participate in Operation Overwatch Project training, focusing on suicide prevention awareness and intervention techniques at Fort Carson, Colo., May 20–21, 2024. (Herbert Roberson/U.S. Army)
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s Defense Suicide Prevention Office lacks the information to monitor department-wide completion of suicide prevention training, a government watchdog disclosed Wednesday.
A defense official told the Government Accountability Office that the DSPO does not receive data from the military services on whether they are completing the training, the report said.
The GAO also said the military services’ headquarters suicide prevention offices generally do not effectively monitor whether training is completed. The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps offices do not regularly track required annual training completion and only the National Guard Bureau takes action to help ensure training completion.
“Developing and implementing evaluation plans would help the services ensure a systematic approach to assessment and determine if trainings are achieving intended outcomes, such as recognizing risk factors for suicide,” the 54-page report says.
The GAO made 17 recommendations, including:
Requiring Pentagon guidance for the services to report suicide prevention training completion data to DSPO.
Developing training evaluation plans.
Regularly monitoring training completion by the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.
The Defense Department agreed with nine recommendations, partially agreed with six and did not agree with two.
“(The) GAO clarified two recommendations and maintains all recommendations remain valid,” the report states.
The suicide rate among active-duty troops decreased in 2024 from the previous year, according to an annual report released by the Pentagon in March.
Overall, there were 471 reported suicides across the total force in 2024, the most recent year for which statistics are available, compared with 531 in 2023.
However, the suicide rate for the active component has increased since 2011.
“It remains to be seen whether the short-term decreases observed in 2024 in the active component will signal a change in long-term trends,” the March report says.
For years, the Pentagon has struggled to bring down the number of suicides in the ranks. The Defense Department began collecting and reporting quarterly surveillance data on service member suicides in 2018 to help guide prevention efforts.
The rate is calculated based on an active-duty force of about 1.33 million troops and about 770,000 reserve and National Guard personnel combined.
The Defense Department in recent years has aimed to improve mental health care access for troops, amid increases in suicide rates and an outcry from Congress and others.
In 2022, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the establishment of the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee, which made 127 recommendations for near- and long-term solutions to address suicides in the ranks. The Pentagon selected 83 of the recommendations from the committee.
The independent panel recommended the department implement a series of gun safety measures to reduce suicides in the force, including waiting periods for the purchase of firearms and ammunition by service members on military property.
