![]() “DoD needs to do this,” said Moulton bluntly. Then, in December, four sailors at a faculty in Norfolk, Virginia died by suicide in one month. Last year, three sailors assigned to the USS George Washington died by suicide in a single week. Though a slight decrease from the previous year’s 582 suicides, the trend over the last decade and more has been increasing. In 2021, the latest year for which numbers are available, 519 US service members died by suicide. Therefore, the mental health evaluations and the confidential reporting required by the law are still not available to service members. That’s why we created the Brandon Act.”īut 15 months after it was passed the law has not been implemented and the Defense Department hasn’t followed through its requirements and issued guidance for the military. “He wanted us to do something about suicide and the toxicity that happens in our military system. “His letter led us to this,” Teri Caserta, Brandon’s mother, told CNN. It also allows service members to seek confidential help outside the chain of command. If a service member seeks mental health services or self-reports a problem, the Act requires a mental health evaluation. The Brandon Act was included in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. “They said, ‘Suck it up and get back to work,’” Patrick Caserta told CNN. He notified his commanders he was depressed but they took no action and showed no sympathy, according to Brandon Caserta’s father Patrick, who served 22 years in the Navy. In letters to his parents and to his friends, Caserta said he was constantly hazed and bullied in the Navy, and he saw no other way out. The Brandon Act is named after Brandon Caserta, a young sailor whose parents described him as a “very charismatic and upbeat young man” who “always helped everyone he could.”īut in June 2018, Caserta took his own life at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia. “They’ve been sitting on their hands and more Americans die every day as a result.” Seth Moulton, who co-sponsored the Brandon Act. “We hear the rhetoric all the time, but we need action,” said Democratic Rep. More than a year after Congress signed into law a bill meant to help service members struggling with severe mental health problems, the Pentagon still has not issued guidance to the services to put the bill into practice.
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