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The Pentagon Spent Millions to Prevent Suicides. But the Suicide Rate Went Up Instead.
The Pentagon Spent Millions to Prevent Suicides. But the Suicide Rate Went Up Instead.
“If the Department of Defense thought it was a priority, they would have done something by now.”
The United States Department of Defense employs nearly three million people, but only nine of them are responsible for developing a suicide prevention strategy across the armed forces. They are the staff of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, the crown jewel of an Obama-era effort to respond to the burgeoning suicide rate among active duty personnel and overhaul the way the military had historically addressed the problem.
With $20 million in funding allocated by Congress shortly after its founding in 2011 and a mandate to modernize the way DoD prevents suicide among active-duty service members, DSPO has found itself increasingly generating more turmoil than solutions. A nasty internal squabble three years after its inception between the founding director and Pentagon higher-ups resulted in an uncomfortable leadership transition and months of employee complaints. A series of unexecuted or discontinued contracts have hurt staff morale and drawn the ire of lawmakers. Annual reports have been sporadic.
For more than a year, the office has gone without a permanent director, cycling through a series of temporary leaders—none of whom had a background in mental health treatment or suicide prevention. Oversight from either Congress or the Pentagon has been sparse. By 2014, DSPO had already bounced between four different chains of command within the Pentagon’s unwieldy bureaucracy. Having been founded initially as a policy office, DSPO at one point was reporting up to DoD’s human resources directorate.
The installation of a permanent director in 2015 streamlined protocols and resolved tension with Pentagon higher-ups, but since Donald Trump took office, his administration has largely neglected this once-central office. Part of the problem has been the administration’s historically slow pace in submitting nominations for key government positions. Since winning the presidency, Trump has filled just 381 of the more than 700 government jobs requiring Senate confirmation, according to the Washington Post. Among these unfilled, or “gapped,” positions, are the top four civilian roles in the Office of Personnel and Readiness, which constitutes DSPO’s current chain of command. Three of those top P&R positions are temporarily being filled by acting directors.
Meanwhile, the suicide rate among active-duty service members has more than doubled between 2001 and 2016.
“We started this office to prevent suicide,” said Jackie Garrick, DSPO’s founding director who now runs an organization for whistleblowers. “I’d still like to see us follow through and actually prevent suicide.”….more here
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