{"id":63207,"date":"2021-04-05T17:05:04","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T17:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/04\/05\/active-duty-suicide-numbers-level-off-after-summer-spike-but-reserves-soar\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:12:11","slug":"active-duty-suicide-numbers-level-off-after-summer-spike-but-reserves-soar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2021\/04\/05\/active-duty-suicide-numbers-level-off-after-summer-spike-but-reserves-soar\/","title":{"rendered":"Active-duty suicide numbers level off after summer spike, but reserves soar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last fall, Army leaders went to the Associated Press<\/a> to announce that they had seen a worrying increase in suicides since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>; the data showed a 30-percent increase in that service alone between the months of July and September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Defense Department did not offer any official explanations for the spike, but it appears to have been isolated to that summer, according to new data<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While active-duty suicides jumped about 8 percent overall last year \u2015 to 377 total, compared to a 7-percent jump the previous year, or 348 total \u2015 the final months of last year saw a leveling-off of that worrisome summer spike, with 99 total suicides from October to December, compared to 100 during the same period in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reserve component, on the other hand, held steady in the first nine months of the year, before exploding with deaths by suicide in the fall and winter \u2015 a 128-percent spike, from 25 deaths in late 2019 to 57 in late 2020. Most of that spike was concentrated in the National Guard, which went from 14 suicides to 39 during the same period; 23 of those deaths were in the Army National Guard, specifically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt this time, it\u2019s too early to determine whether suicide rates are going to show an increase or decrease for calendar year 2020,\u201d Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday, as suicide numbers are subject to change as death investigations are completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though DoD releases quarterly suicide reports in real-time, it does not comment on the findings until fall, when it releases a report on the previous year\u2019s suicide statistics, giving time for investigations to finish and numbers to fluctuate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Guard, which saw an overall decrease in suicide deaths in 2019, had been bracing itself for an uptick in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t even know what the impacts are going to be of this stress,\u201d Air Force Maj. Gen. Dawne Deskins, the deputy director of the Air National Guard, told Military Times in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\t