In CY 2023, 523 Service members died by suicide, which is more than the previous year (493). The Total Force rate – which is the focus of the ASRM report – of suicide deaths per 100,000 Service members was 9 percent higher than in 2022.

Active Component suicide rates have gradually increased since 2011. The 2023 Active Component rate is higher (12 percent) than 2022.

BEAUFORT, S.C. — Tatiana Sowell held her youngest child as she stood amid the rows of white headstones and stately mossy oaks. Her late husband, Logan, was buried in this national cemetery nearly four years ago after taking his life and ending what his widow describes as a ruinous tenure in one of the U.S. military’s most iconic jobs: Marine drill instructor. He was 33.

Logan Sowell’s suicide in July 2021 is one of at least seven in the past five years involving the Marine Corps’ stable of drill instructors, according to military casualty reports obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2023, three occurred at Parris Island within less than three months.

A study completed by the Marine Corps in 2019 found that during the previous decade, 29 drill instructors either ended their lives or openly acknowledged they had contemplated doing so — an aberration the study’s authors characterized as startlingly high compared with the occurrence of suicidal ideation among Marines who had never held that job.
Rates of addiction and divorce among drill instructors also were higher, researchers found.
Critics and relatives of those who died accuse the Marine Corps of fostering an environment that contributed to their deaths. They describe routine 90-hour-plus workweeks, sleep deprivation and an always-on culture that frequently caused the job’s requisite intensity to seep into their personal lives, igniting disputes with loved ones. Others detailed bouts of depression or alcohol dependency.

While the adrenaline-fueled assignment has always been high-stress, the 2016 death of 20-year-old Raheel Siddiqui, a Muslim recruit who was found by investigators to have suffered vicious abuse while at Parris Island, led the institution to sharpen its oversight of the men and women who indoctrinate newcomers. There is uncompromising accountability now, which has made the hardships long associated with being a drill instructor dangerously unbearable for some, observers say. They note, too, that the Marine Corps lacks adequate services for those who are struggling and need help, and tacitly condones a culture that stigmatizes those who seek it.

...routine 90-hour-plus workweeks, sleep deprivation and an always-on culture that frequently caused the job’s requisite intensity to seep into their personal lives, igniting disputes with loved ones.