A critical data source for US military suicide prevention efforts is late, with no indication that it’s coming anytime soon or at all.
Usually published each fall, the annual suicide report provides suicide statistics from the previous calendar year that inform Congress, researchers, and senior leaders across the services on efforts to combat military suicide, a persistent problem.
The report is usually released each fall, but is now missing with no clear explanation from the Department of Defense.
The DoD is also behind in releasing its quarterly suicide data for 2025, with the third-quarter figures still unpublished, months later than usual.
Business Insider queried the Pentagon in mid-December about the anticipated release date of the annual report.
“The Department has nothing to announce at this time,” a department spokesperson replied in an email. “We will follow up if anything changes.” When asked again this week why the report is delayed and when it might be published, the Pentagon did not respond.
Business Insider sent a separate email query to the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, which releases the report. The office did not respond.
It is unclear whether the delay is tied to the government shutdown.
Though the data is beneficial, the monthslong delay is unlikely to significantly affect research or prevention efforts, said Ron Kessler, a principal investigator on a long-term Army suicide study and a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, adding that researchers depend more frequently on detailed data that reveals patterns and circumstances around deaths.
The bigger issue is tied to accountability, public transparency, and oversight, he said.
“Publishing is letting the outside world know what’s going on,” Keller said. “And that’s useful for holding organizations accountable.”
The Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs have each taken pains to implement better suicide prevention efforts, Kessler said, highlighting one such effort in which he is involved that is testing the effectiveness of artificial intelligence as a means of identifying those at risk of suicide. However, the annual reports show clearly what progress has been made and where work still needs to be done.
“It’s important for the data to be out there,” Kessler added, “not to ever be to a point where we say what’s not being shown anymore. It’s good for the public to be able to say, ‘Is the military doing a good job? What’s going on?'”
Suicide deaths among service members rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the most recent publicly available data — from calendar year 2023 — showed a small increase over the year prior. According to the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, military suicide deaths have increased gradually since 2011.
The 2023 report showed that young enlisted men accounted for the largest share of suicide deaths in the US military. That mirrors broader national trends. American men are nearly four times more likely to die by suicide than women, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Firearms were involved in roughly half of all US suicide deaths in 2023, and previous military reports have repeatedly identified access to firearms as a risk factor, particularly for younger enlisted personnel.
Some military leaders recently emphasized suicide prevention needs during the holiday season. In November, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll directed supervisors across the Army to conduct daily check-ins with their subordinates through mid-January.
Though the initiative was initially lauded, some supervisors and troops online have described the mandatory directive as unintentionally burdensome.
The broader Pentagon reporting delays coincide with certain organizational changes inside the Army. A September Army memo highlighted plans to disband its directorate responsible for overseeing soldier quality-of-life issues, known as a G-9, citing “administrative convenience.” The responsibilities of that office have since been folded into the service’s human resources directorate.
Army spokeswoman Heather J. Hagan confirmed the change to Business Insider on Thursday, adding that the service remains committed to troop and family quality of life.
It is unclear how the change may affect oversight of soldier well-being or how suicide prevention priorities are being evaluated as the Pentagon’s annual suicide data remains unpublished.
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