The mother of the sailor who inspired a law that overhauled mental health access in the military says she wants to sit down with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to discuss military suicides.
“We lose nearly three active-duty service members every day to suicide. Many more suffer in silence, experiencing harassment, abuse, and retaliation for seeking help. Yet these issues continue to be overlooked,” Teri Caserta wrote in an open letter she posted to social media addressed to Hegseth. “In your first few months as Secretary of Defense, you have a historic opportunity to confront the rising suicide crisis and the systemic failures behind it.”
Pentagon spokesperson Col. Christian Devine told Task & Purpose that Hegseth would consider meeting with Caserta.
“The mental and physical health of our nation’s warfighters are top priorities for Secretary Hegseth. Both he and all in the Department’s leadership remain open to ideas on tackling health issues within our formations,” Devine said. “If his schedule permits, the secretary would consider meeting with family members who are directly impacted by these important issues.”
Caserta told Task & Purpose that she has not heard Hegseth address military suicides.
“I have not heard one thing from him about military suicides,” she told Task & Purpose. “I don’t think he knows about the Brandon Act either, so Patrick and I would love to sit down with him and talk about the issues our service members have and endure while they’re serving.”
According to the Pentagon’s latest annual report, the rate of suicides across the active duty force has gradually increased since 2011. During the Biden Administration, Pentagon leaders made suicide prevention a major policy goal, standing up the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee. The committee led to policy changes, like increasing the number of mental health staff, personal firearm safety policies, and quality of life directives, such as ensuring troops can get more sleep.
But since Hegseth took over in January, defense leaders have made few public statements about military suicides or mental health, although a presidential executive order and Hegseth’s follow-on policies to boot trans service members labeled various mental health conditions as “incompatible with active duty.”
Parents’ activism led to the Brandon Act
Teri Caserta and her husband, Patrick, lobbied Congress to pass the Brandon Act in 2021, a law named after their son Petty Officer 3rd Class Brandon Caserta. A Navy investigation found that Brandon Caserta intentionally ran into a helicopter’s spinning tail rotor in 2018 after he was bullied by a supervisor and was unable to access mental health resources. The Brandon Act created a process for service members to confidentially seek mental health resources by asking for an evaluation referral from supervisors E-5 and above. It also allows troops to use duty time to attend appointments.
“Service members are often punished for asking questions or requesting help. That is a leadership failure, and it stems from a culture lacking empathy,” Teri Caserta wrote to Hegseth. “Many who die by suicide never even deploy. They die here — on U.S. soil — with access to resources they’re blocked from using.”
The policy was signed into law four years ago but implementation of it has been “inconsistent,” Teri Caserta said. Leaders have either ignored the law, she said, or its rules and requirements are not widely understood by many in the military, including both troops seeking help and their leaders.
Confusion over privacy policies around a mental health diagnosis and care led many to forgo treatment, a RAND Corporation report from December 2024 found. The lack of understanding around policies extended to military leaders and even mental health providers, according to RAND researchers. The report also noted that “it remains unclear” how the Brandon Act preserves privacy or enhances current protections of service member self-referrals to mental health support without command involvement.
Defense Health Agency officials told Task & Purpose that the agency developed a one-hour, mandatory computer-based training for behavioral health care providers and clinicians that covers “implementation of the Brandon Act, including how to provide related consultation to military leaders and service members.” Since the training was published in April 2024, more than 39,700 have completed the DHA training.
Teri Caserta said she still hears from service members and the parents of troops about their fears of retaliation, bullying and harassment by toxic commanders.
“Toxicity is rampant, and they don’t feel comfortable going to anybody, asking for help because they’ll be turned away like Brandon was,” she said. “They told him to suck it up and get back to work.”
Navy investigators found that Brandon Caserta’s lead petty officer’s “belligerence, vulgarity and brash leadership was likely a significant contributing factor,” in his suicide.
In a final note to his parents, Brandon Caserta wrote that he wanted to see “as many people fired, kicked out or, at the very least, lose rank.”
Inconsistent implementation
Patrick Caserta said the Brandon Act can be invoked for troops dealing with a range of mental health-related concerns like gambling, substance misuse, sexual harassment and assault. But he said he fears the policy is not useful if troops don’t know about it.
“The Pentagon promised us posters in the workplace, they promised us billboards, all kinds of advertising campaigns,” Patrick Caserta said.
Each of the military branches have put out information on the Brandon Act in their own way: the Navy added information about the self-referral process to its mental health playbook for sailors; the Marine Corps published procedures for self-referrals in a Functional Area Checklist, the Army created its own policy and the Air Force developed a specific program.
Officials with the Defense Health Agency consulted on course content with each of the services, which are developing annual training for leaders and service members on the Brandon Act. The Marine Corps integrated Brandon Act-specific training into its leadership toolkits, quarterly suicide prevention program coordinator calls, and the Warfighter Mental Readiness Playbook. The Navy’s training will teach sailors and leaders how to recognize personnel who may require a mental health evaluation, according to a fact sheet. The Air Force’s training went live in February 2024 and includes how airmen can obtain a referral for evaluation “that protects their privacy.”
However, each year, service members have to complete hundreds of hours of online training, an issue that has even led the Army to scale back some of its required training courses. Adding another module that many troops will likely rush through just to mark as “complete,” could mean that they likely won’t retain much of the information.
‘Commands are responsible for these suicides’
In 2018, Brandon Caserta was one of 68 active-duty sailors and 11 reservists who died by suicide, marking a new annual high for the Navy at the time.
The Casertas were no strangers to military life when Brandon joined the Navy. Patrick Caserta retired from the Navy as a senior chief. He believes there should be more accountability for leadership when troops commit suicide. He also said he believes the U.S. should consider the model used in the Canadian armed forces, which holds boards of inquiry for suicides.
“They determine what happened and they learn from it, and they write it all out and they actually investigate it and everybody’s role in it and they hold people accountable,” he said about Canada’s system.
The Navy has launched investigations around suicides before.
When four sailors assigned to a ship maintenance center in Virginia died by suicide within a 28-day span in 2022, the Navy launched an investigation. The inquiry found poor living conditions, an understaffed crew lacking in senior leadership, chaotic work schedules and insufficient mental health resources. A memo from former Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro sent to the force said that senior leaders “let our standards slip,” and “let our people down.” However, none of the center’s commanders were punished as a result of the investigation.
“Accountability works when it’s used properly,” Patrick Caserta said. He cited the 2017 collision of the USS Fitzgerald with a Filipino container ship that killed seven sailors, an unprecedented incident in which the Navy originally brought criminal charges against two officers. The criminal charges were eventually dropped, but the threat of prison, Patrick Caserta said, was an example of accountability leading to reforms.
“In the case of suicide, it should be the same way,” he said. “These commands are responsible for these suicides.”
If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the Lifeline network is available 24/7 across the United States. Reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling or texting 988 and you’ll be connected to trained counselors.
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