A Navy investigation of a suicide aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier last year has revealed deadly shortcomings in the service's peer-based method of addressing mental health, which depends on fellow sailors and deckplate leadership to provide support.
The command-directed probe of the death aboard the Roosevelt as it was undergoing a long maintenance period in Washington state details failures by friends on the ship to report warning signs and poor leadership by enlisted supervisors that may have contributed to the death. It also suggests a separate recent suicide cluster aboard another carrier, the USS George Washington, was not an isolated issue.
Electrician's Mate (Nuclear) 3rd Class Jacob Slocum, who died by suicide on the ship on Dec. 5, 2022, was one of three sailors on the Roosevelt at the time who would end their lives in the span of a few months. The investigation into his death was not publicly released but was provided to his family and obtained by Military.com.
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"The findings of this investigation, coupled with those of the investigation into suicides aboard USS George Washington ... indicate that sailors assigned to ships in extended maintenance availabilities may be at higher risk," Rear Adm. Christopher Alexander, the commander of Carrier Strike Group 9, wrote in the letter accepting the investigation's findings.
The investigation, which focused largely on the circumstances that led to Slocum's suicide in one of the ship's engineering spaces, reveals that access to mental health was lacking aboard the ship even as pressure increased on the crew, and especially Slocum's nuclear reactor division, to make the ship ready to leave the shipyard.
In the case of the George Washington, Navy figures showed that the carrier had suffered at least nine suicides since November 2019.
It took sailors reaching out to Military.com after the final incident in April 2022 to make the spate of suicides public. The sailors who were interviewed pointed to issues such as commuting time, challenges with living aboard and absent leadership as problems. Later, Navy investigations confirmed those problems, along with leadership issues and a general failure to take care of sailors that left them fending for themselves and drove suicidal thoughts to become widespread among the ship.
The commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Capt. Brian Schrum, noted that "having reviewed the [George Washington] investigations, I observed several commonalities that exist within this report" in his own letter accepting the investigation's findings.
However, Schrum did not specifically say what he thought those were and also noted that there were "very specific and unique matters to what occurred onboard [the Roosevelt], such as the individual leadership and performance failures that were noted in the investigation."
A Navy spokesperson told Military.com that "while the Navy is a resilient force, we face the same challenges in physical and mental health affecting the nation we serve."
"The Navy is working daily to ensure support and resources are available to sailors in the shipyards, at sea and at home," the spokesperson added.
During the summer of 2022, the Roosevelt's psychologist "noticed what he believed was an increase in psychiatric hospitalizations and use of uniformed mental health outpatient services" aboard the ship.
The lieutenant, whose name is redacted in the report, also determined that reactor department sailors like Slocum were the "largest consumers of mental health outpatient services," with nearly half of all mental health encounters from June to July 2022 being from that team.
Schrum acknowledged that "a pressurized shipyard workload, coupled with increasing schedule fluctuation and pressure to remain on timeline, created a demanding environment for our sailors across the ship and especially within [the] reactor department."
The ship asked for another counselor in August. The report noted that "the ship's psychologist assessed that current manning is insufficient to meet the mental health needs of over 2,600 individuals on board."
That request went unanswered, but wait times for help grew.
"Most of the sailors interviewed understood the wait time to see a shipboard mental health provider when someone is not in a state of acute crisis is generally 2-4 weeks; however, some were of the belief that it could take months to get an appointment," the report found.
The investigations of the George Washington found similar, overwhelming demands.
The crew started to buckle, and the report found that in the year since June 2022, the Theodore Roosevelt had placed 14 on limited duty and separated another 24 from the Navy altogether for mental health reasons.
There was an acknowledgement from senior enlisted leaders that the shipyard environment was part of the problem.
One senior chief petty officer in the reactor department told investigators that "the shipyard was responsible for 80% of the low morale," and that "the dynamic between the shipyard and the sailors can cause friction and becomes an added stressor."
Even the investigator, a Navy captain who himself ran a reactor department in the past, noted that the "climate/culture that was present over the last year on [the Roosevelt] is not that different from my recent experience on [USS Carl Vinson] at a similar time in a [carrier] lifecycle just a few years ago."
In those situations, when mental health services are stretched or unavailable, the Navy says sailors should turn to each other and their bosses -- the chief petty officers -- for help.
Last March, at the rollout of the Navy's new "Mental Health Playbook," Force Master Chief Jason Dunn, a top enlisted official at the Navy's Installation Command, told reporters that "the chief's mess is obligated to know their sailors and detect differences and things in a sailor so that they can have that conversation and check on their quality of life and well-being."
"Sometimes, the sailor just needs that conversation -- that kneecap to kneecap -- to have a discussion about what's going on in their lives," Dunn said.
However, the investigation found that the chiefs in Slocum's orbit were part of the problem. Many sailors blamed one chief for Slocum's suicide while another, senior chief was "specifically cited by multiple witnesses as being unsupportive of sailors accessing mental health resources."
In fact, "several witnesses in various levels of reactor leadership positions agreed that the stigma against mental health was occurring at the deck plate or 'peer to peer' level," the investigators said.
"Several people who cared for [Slocum] were made aware of warning signs about his mental well-being," the report found, but it noted that none alerted ship leaders.
"First-line supervisors appear ill-equipped to identify warning signs and to take appropriate preventive actions," the report concluded.
The ship's medical officer wanted to have a training period to talk to the crew about "mental fitness, resiliency, and stress control" that they began planning in August. But "due to various ship scheduling and assessment conflicts," the date was ultimately set for "early or mid-December."
Slocum died on Dec. 5, 2022, just three days after the scheduled date for the training. It was "ultimately shifted to mid-December 2022," the report noted.
Following Slocum's death, the investigation found that leaders in the reactor department and the ship gave those sailors "a week off of work to grieve, access resources, and recover from the tragic loss of their shipmate."
But when additional time was requested, it was "ultimately denied, by individuals up echelon due to the need to complete the availability in a timely manner," the report added.
Alexander said that he agreed with the report's recommendation that additional mental health resources be made available to the ship and even added that "this recommendation is likely applicable to all [aircraft carriers]."
After Slocum's death, the ship received an influx of temporary help, including grief counselors and the Navy's "Special Psychiatric Rapid Intervention Team," or SPRINT. But, the report, which was submitted in August, noted that at the time, the Roosevelt had yet to receive the extra, permanent counselor it requested in the prior summer.
Veterans and service members experiencing a mental health emergency can call the Veteran Crisis Line, 988 and press 1. Help also is available by text, 838255, and via chat at VeteransCrisisLine.net.
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