The Department of Defense Thursday took pains not to acknowledge reports of a spike in military suicides of up to 30% during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic this year, instead saying it was “too early” to comment on data.
“Certainly, due to the COVID pandemic, many of us are experiencing some level of stressors, anxiety, disconnectedness,” Defense Suicide Prevention Office Director Dr. Karin Orvis told the Washington Examiner when asked to comment on the effects of the pandemic on service members.
“We are taking actions in the department to stay ahead of this,” she added while refusing to draw a direct correlation between suicide and the pandemic.
Repeated efforts by defense journalists to get Orvis to acknowledge an Associated Press story suggesting that suicides have risen by 20% across the services, and 30% in the Army, were dismissed.
The defense official said the full year of data must be gathered and analyzed first.
“At this time, it is too early to determine whether suicide rates will increase for calendar year 2020,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has only released first-quarter 2020 suicide data, from January to March 31.
Defense officials declined to discuss second-quarter data, which covers the period of April to June, when COVID-19 ravaged the military and service members faced extensive lockdowns and travel stop orders.
Thursday’s briefing was intended to discuss the release of the Department of Defense Calendar Year 2019 Annual Suicide Report.
In 2019, 498 service members committed suicide, a rate of 25.9 per 100,000, which Orvis said was comparable to the civilian population.
In the first quarter of 2020, the military reported 85 active-duty suicides, 16 in the Reserve, and 23 in the National Guard, numbers that are all slightly lower than the first quarter of 2019.
But what happened in the second and third quarters when COVID lockdowns created an additional stressor for service members remains a mystery that the Pentagon refused to discuss.
The Army, the largest service, was also the hardest hit by the coronavirus, with some 17,000 cases as of Wednesday.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Chief Gen. James McConville released a joint statement Thursday, acknowledging that the Army faced pandemic-stress-related suicides.
“In the face of additional stress of a pandemic, we are working to improve access to behavioral health care while enhancing our resilience training and stigma reduction efforts,” the statement read.
Guard suicides remain steady
In a press call Thursday, the National Guard disclosed that it suffered 77 suicides in 2020 through Thursday, compared to 89 for the same period last year.
The Guard began to institute robust pilot programs across the 50 states and four U.S. territories to address suicides after 2018 figures showed a rate of 30.8 suicides per 100,000, about 10 points above the national civilian average.
The efforts reduced the suicide rate in the Guard to 20.3 in 2019, officials disclosed.
Maj. Gen. Dawne Deskins, deputy director of the Air National Guard, said the National Guard has been called up more this year than any time since World War II, adding stress and putting members in direct contact with COVID-19 patients.
“It’s been a busy year for the National Guard,” she said of domestic deployments to help states respond to the coronavirus, civil unrest, and natural disasters. “That is a lot that we’re asking them to do.”
Capt. Matthew Kleiman, director of National Guard Warrior Resilience and Fitness, noted that behavioral health services are made available to Guard members on training weekends, and there has been a 43% increase in access over 2019.
“One of the areas that is important is a person’s willingness to seek help,” he told the Washington Examiner. “We’re also interested in promoting resilience and promoting health-seeking behavior, expanding access to care.”
He added: “A lot of what we did started way before COVID.”
