Military suicide rates increased in 2023

Suicide rates in the military increased in 2023, a slight uptick from 2022 that adds to a larger, troubling rise over the past decade.

The annual report shows 523 servicemembers died by suicide in 2023, compared to 493 in 2022, while the number was much higher than the 301 recorded deaths in 2011.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the suicide rate "findings urgently demonstrate the need for the Department to redouble its work in the complex fields of suicide prevention and postvention."

"One loss to suicide is one too many," he said in a statement. "We are dedicated to fighting for our service members by fostering supportive team cultures and tackling the stigma of asking for help and other barriers to care. 

"We continue working hard to improve the delivery of mental health care, bolster suicide prevention training, and educate people about lethal means safety.  There’s still much more work to do, and we won’t let up," Austin added.

The report is from the Office of Force Resiliency and Defense Suicide Prevention Office under the Defense secretary's Personnel and Readiness Office.

Timothy Hoyt, deputy director of the Force Resilience Office, said the Pentagon was committed to "making sure that we remain accountable for our efforts in the suicide prevention space."

"I don't want us to get lost in the information there and lose sight of the fact that each death by suicide is a tragedy, that these are individual service members and family members whom we have lost to the scourge of suicide," he said. "And we want to not lose sight of how important that is at the individual level."

While the numbers are grim, they do show a decrease in suicide rates for the family members of a military servicemember, which often means their spouse.

The Pentagon reported for the first time long-term trends for family member suicide rates, showing that in 2022, decreased to 146 in 2022, compared to 165 in 2021 and 200 in 2020.

The data shows that firearms remain a leading cause of suicide death for military servicemembers and their families. The Pentagon is trying to address this problem with spreading awareness about safely securing and storing firearms.

For active duty, suicide rates increased from 331 in 2022 to 363 in 2023. Rates increased for the Air Force, Navy and Army, but stayed the same for the Marines.

And for the reserves, the suicide rates increased slightly, from 65 in 2022 to 69 in 2023, but decreased for the National Guard, from 97 to 91 in the same time period.

The Pentagon has employed a multi-pronged approach to tackling the problem, implementing a strengthened suicide prevention strategy plan in 2023 that includes efforts to increase mental health care and address social stigma, among others. Each military branch also has its own strategy.

And for fiscal year 2025, Austin said the Pentagon is planning to "make an unprecedented investment in suicide prevention," once approved by Congress.

"We have witnessed that principled leadership and focused resource investment makes a difference and can decrease harmful behaviors," Austin said in his statement.

Hoyt said in the past there has been "insufficient investment" in suicide prevention programs and a failure to track "whether or not those programs are working at both the micro and the macro level."

"And so admittedly, yes, that long term trend is gradually increasing," he said, but the office now has a "mechanism by which we can address as many of those potential risks as possible and make investments in those spaces."