The Navy reported a record number of suicides in the first quarter of 2024, again drawing attention to the myriad issues revealed about the quality of life for sailors and the service’s ability to prevent such deaths.
According to recently released Pentagon data on suicide across all the services, the Navy reported 24 suicides among its sailors for the first three months of 2024. That is the highest-ever quarterly figure for the service going back to 2018, when data first started being released.
The news comes just months after the service’s own surveys showed that more than one-third of sailors said they felt “severe or extreme” levels of stress in 2023 — up from around one-fourth of the fleet in 2019.
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The Pentagon’s suicide data shows that the Navy managed to make progress on tamping down suicide in 2020 and 2021 — the years when COVID-19 restrictions were at their most stringent.
In 2020, the Navy reported 65 deaths by suicide — down from 73 in 2019. In 2021, the total dropped even further to 59.
However, since then, the annual figures have climbed back up. In 2022, the annual total shot up to 71 deaths by suicide, and last year the Navy reported 69 deaths.
In March, the Pentagon’s independent watchdog started investigating whether the service “effectively took actions to prevent and respond to incidents of deaths by suicide,…
