DoD’s ‘First-of-its-Kind’ Prevention Workforce to Focus on Mental Health

In October, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released its most recent Annual Report on Suicide, which found the suicide rate among active component service members dropping by 15% between 2020 and 2021.

This recent decrease aside, though, the same report also notes that suicide rates for active service members have gradually gone up since 2011.

Released annually, the aforementioned report provides yearly suicide data and outlines the department’s efforts to address and prevent suicide across the DoD. Mental health issues remain a major risk factor for suicide, of course, and the DoD is keeping its focus on mental well-being and suicide prevention in an effort to reverse this trend.

A key component of that effort is the department’s hiring of a new and dedicated “primary prevention workforce” focused on suicide prevention and service members’ mental health, as detailed in a recent DoD statement.

“There’s so much more work to do, and we will not be satisfied as long as there is a single suicide remaining in the force—and that includes the family members of the force,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks recently told Washington Post Live.

“We have worked across a bipartisan coalition in Congress to support the department having a prevention workforce that will ultimately be about 2,000 people,” according to Hicks. “We have, right now as we speak, several hundred openings available.”

Clinicians and mental health professionals interested in these positions can apply at www.usajobs.gov. The public health and social science professionals who sign on to be part of this dedicated workforce “will be responsible for helping to provide military commanders with the tools needed to reduce a wide range of risk factors—such as substance misuse, toxic leadership or financial stress—and build up important protective factors, such as healthy coping mechanisms and cohesion, that will ultimately prevent harmful behaviors,” according to the DoD.

“[These are] all the factors that go into causing stress and harm behaviors, including … suicide,” Hicks told Washington Post Live. “We are quite confident that’s a very science-based approach that we’re using. It’s the largest effort like this that has ever existed at an unprecedented scale. … This prevention workforce will be a first-of-its-kind, and we’re going to do it right here in the United States military, because that’s what we owe our people and their families.”

Seeking Help is a Sign of Strength

An important step toward ultimately reducing suicides in the military is eliminating the stigma associated with seeking the type of mental health care provided by the professionals the Department of Defense is seeking for its prevention workforce, according to Hicks.

“We have a number of initiatives underway now to make sure we remove that stigma, not just that it’s not … bad to seek help, if you will, for your behaviors, for your mental health, but really that it’s a sign of strength.”

One DoD program designed to help shed the stigma of seeking mental health assistance is the department’s Resources Exist, Asking Can Help (REACH) initiative. Initially piloted at six installations across the department, the program was shown to reduce service members’ reluctance to seek assistance, according to Hicks, who noted to Washington Post Live that the department continues to expand REACH for military spouses and remote and overseas locations.

The department also continues to concentrate on “lethal means safety,” including the safe storage of firearms and other means for suicide, such as medications, according to Hicks, noting that firearms are the most common method of suicide among military members and beyond.

“We know, and it’s well-documented, that if we can create a little time and space between that ideation, that idea of having concerns about … potentially committing suicide and those lethal means—obviously, firearms being foremost, but also medications—if we can create that time and space, create some safety, then that reduces the likelihood of suicide.”