By: Meghann Myers (MilitaryTimes)
The National Guard’s suicide rate has climbed higher than the active duty and Reserve’s, according to an annual Pentagon study released Thursday. In response, officials are looking for new ways to help troops feel comfortable coming forward about their issues and getting help they need.
The most recent figure is about 30.6 deaths per 100,000 service members, according to the Defense Department Annual Suicide Report for calendar year 2018, well above the Reserve’s 22.9 per 100,000 and the active component’s 24.8.
While all three components are staring down growing suicide rates, the National Guard faces a unique problem, officials told Military Times, because they don’t have the day-to-day interaction that active troops have with their leadership, and members are often in-between military and civilian health care, so it’s not always clear which providers they should seek out if they’re having trouble.
Their troops also face issues local to their communities, so any attempt at a service-wide policy has to consider that one size won’t fit all. With that in mind, the National Guard Bureau got two separate but related initiatives off the ground.
In one corner, the bureau’s Warrior Resilience and Fitness Division will pull best practices from all 54 state and territory guard commands, collect data and put together strategies, under a program called SPRING: Suicide Prevention and Readiness Initiative for the National Guard.
The innovation they hope to foster dovetails with the Warrior Resilience And Fitness Division’s new Innovation Incubator, which is looking for ideas that extend to readiness, wellness, resilience and beyond.
Out of 50 ideas submitted earlier this year, the program has selected 12 to pilot. They cover substance abuse, physical fitness, access to behavioral health, sexual assault prevention and employment assistance, among others, and will be under the purview of a state guard bureau, from Massachusetts, Ohio and Indiana to New Mexico and Montana.
