Active duty and reserve members of the military took their own lives at an alarming rate during the COVID-19 pandemic, although the pace at least stabilized after rising for years, according to a Pentagon report.
In 2020, 580 military members committed suicide, a rate of 28.7 per 100,000, according to the Department of Defense’s annual report on the subject. Although the rate was not a big jump from 2019 to 2020, the top Pentagon official called the data "troubling."
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“The findings are troubling," Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement. "Suicide rates among our service members are military families are still too high, and the trends are not going in the right direction.”
There were 504 suicides in 2019 and 543 the year before, though the overall pool of service members fluctuated. The data do not include veterans, a group that has been plagued by mental health issues and suicides.
“This is a paramount challenge for our Department,” Austin continued. “We must redouble our efforts to provide all of our people with the care and the resources they need, to reduce stigmas and barriers to care, and to ensure that our community uses simple safety measures and precautions to reduce the risk of future tragedies.”
The most common demographic for those who committed suicide were enlisted men under the age of 30. People who fit that description make up approximately 42% of the military but account for 63% of suicides.
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Dr. Karin Orvis, director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told reporters on Wednesday that "impulsivity" contributed to 75% of the suicides within the under-30 group during the last year.
"Part of it has to do with impulsivity," she said. "Younger individuals and males tend to have higher level of impulsivity."
She noted that most suicides are committed with guns and said that method, in particular, can be an act of impulse.
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