Recommendations to Enhance Army Suicide Prevention

This report provides recommendations for Army Senior Leaders that aim to improve the effectiveness of efforts to prevent harmful behaviors. The recommendations align with the Department of Defense’s Prevention Plan of Action, which includes understanding the problem, developing a comprehensive approach, ensuring quality implementation, and providing continuous evaluation.

CNA and the Army Resilience Directorate conducted a systems thinking pilot on suicide prevention to holistically examine suicide prevention and identify large-scale changes for the Army to take to reduce suicide risk. Systems thinking facilitates identification of how different organizational components interact, and how those components change in response to those interactions. It can help pinpoint ways that initiatives can backfire and identify ways to prevent those unintended consequences from occurring. The systems thinking pilot was facilitated by consultants from Bridgeway Partners who are experts in applying systems thinking tools to complex social problems. Army stakeholders participated in all aspects of the pilot. External experts in prevention participated in defining and elaborating on recommendations developed through the pilot. The resulting recommendations are the following: