Photo by Clay Banks / Unsplash According to the Department of Defense’s Annual Report on Suicide in the military, which outlines suicide trends among service members and their families, 523 service members died by suicide in 2023. This harrowing statistic marks the highest number of deaths since 2020.
The report, released Nov. 14, recorded a striking 1,373 men and women actively serving in the armed forces who attempted suicide in 2023.
Since 2005, veteran suicide rates have risen by a startling 50%, and a baffling 150% for veterans of post-9/11 wars , a trend Robert Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation and combat veteran of the Army Special Forces, deemed an “unprecedented crisis in the force” in congressional testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.
The Department of Veterans Affairs also recently released its most recent Suicide Prevention Annual Report , disclosing that the average number of veteran suicides per day had increased from 16.4 in 2001 to 17.5 in 2021. Although the Defense Department started tracking the data a little over a decade ago, these numbers support a steady and rising trend in military-related suicides over the past two decades.
Unfortunately, self-inflicted deaths are just one piece of a larger mental health crisis. The VA estimates that 41% of veterans require some level of mental health care, yet of the 18.1 million veterans in the U.S., only 11% of them obtained VA mental health services.
The mental health crisis has been intensified as service members who deployed during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars transition out of the military, with many lacking adequate mental health resources to guide the transition to civilian life. An estimated 30,000 War on Terror veterans have tragically died by suicide, a staggering statistic totaling over four times the number of deaths by war violence in post-9/11 conflicts.
When asked about coping with civilian life after deploying twice in active combat roles, Shane Hudson, a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, explained, “The misnomer is that people think it is simple to just overcome or move on … I don’t fully […]
Suicides In Military Continue To Rise, The Mental Health Fight Is Far From Over
