Captain William Mathis is second in command of the USS George Washington. 

It’s September, and for the past couple days, the ship has been operating off the coast of Florida to stay out of the path of Hurricane Lee. Walking the carrier’s flight deck, he said the ship made a number of changes after three sailors died by suicide in April 2022,  which drew national scrutiny. 

When another sailor died on January 23, it felt like a huge step backward. 

“The captain cried. I cried as he was a member of our family,” Mathis said. “It was very difficult. And it will never be easy to deal with the death of one of our sailors; one of our teammates.” 

Naval Criminal Investigative Service confirms that from the time the carrier went into the shipyard at Newport News in 2017 to the time it left the yard in May, 11 sailors died by suicide. 

“I think we've made tremendous changes, but there is no finish line. To lose another sailor, it was difficult. It was gut wrenching,” Mathis said.

The average age of the sailors who died on the Washington was 24 years old - most had never been to sea. Not counting two sailors in their 30s who were part of the 11, the average age was only 22 years old. 

Nine of the 11 died by gunshot wounds to the head. One sailor in 2019 purchased the gun that killed him the day before at the Langley Air Force Main exchange in Hampton, according to reports provided by NCIS.

Most of the sailors who died were not living on board the carrier itself at the time of their deaths. But conditions in the yard were so bleak that after the ship set sail in May, some sailors told Captain Brent Gaut that they thought the carrier would never get underway again.  

“You could see a little glimmer of hope in their eyes that for a long time that we hadn't seen because it had been so long in the shipyard,” Gaut said. “And so to be able to see that, to share that moment with them was so powerful. And we've only built upon that since then.”

The crew of USS Washington turned over three times during the six-year-long maintenance cycle. By the time the carrier was ready to return to the fleet, 85% of the crew had never been to sea. 

The Navy’s report on the suicides recommended limiting the time young sailors spend in the yard. All nuclear powered carriers and submarines undergo refueling and maintenance halfway through their 50-year lifespan. John Cordle, a retired captain, said it’s dreary work.

“George Washington had like 50 sailors driving buses all the time to get back and forth to work,” he said. “That's not fulfilling, right?” 

The Washington was delayed by COVID and budget cuts, but midlife overhauls always take several years.  

Cordle works as a human factors engineer for the safety department at Naval Surface Forces Atlantic in Norfolk. Over the years, he said he’s been in the room while leaders push back against another recommendation from the Navy’s report - handing the ships over to experienced ship building crews, rather than leaving the ship’s crew in the yard for years.

“I've watched senior officers bring up the idea for these long avails,” he said. “And then just get crushed.”

Leadership worried about the cost and the loss of control, if they handed over a ship to another crew, even if they were more qualified to make repairs, he said. 

The Washington is going through the process of preparing to leave Norfolk around the end of the year for San Diego. Eventually it will be based in Japan. Kellylynn Zuni, the ship’s command psychologist, said the number of mental health visits have dropped since the carrier left the yard. 

“I think that during the shipyard, we saw an influx of sailors who were just seeking help for shipyard life,” she said. “And so now such into an operational setting, we do see that stressors do change, but things have gotten better.”

The Navy reported sailors on the Washington weren’t being trained on the Navy’s suicide prevention programs. The time to see a mental health provider ballooned to months. 

After the three suicides in April 2022, the Navy surveyed the crew and reported a high level of distrust of military medicine and mental healthcare specifically. The mental health staff have been given a higher profile on the carrier by command, said Terrance Levine, the deployed resiliency counselor on the USS Washington.

“I think over time, I've seen more sailors saying, ‘Hey, let's use the resources we have.’ I'm seeing them coming to us more,” he said. 

USS Washington didn’t create new programs, Zuni said. Instead, she said the solution is to get on board with the Navy’s existing programs while doubling the number of mental health staff on the carrier. She’d like to see the extra staff become permanent throughout the fleet.  

“That's something that we're advocating for, is that we're I mean, we can see in the numbers that our numbers, access to care looks really good,” she said.

The mental health staff is now large enough that anyone who needs to be seen immediately will have someone available,  she said.

The current military mental health system is already straining to meet the demand, as the Navy tries to figure out how to bring down the suicide rate, which is higher than the suicide rate among the general public. 

Data provided by the Navy Personnel shows the Navy has only been able to hire 66% of the mental health nurse practitioners and train only 40% of drug and alcohol counselors already in the last budget. The service also expects shortages in most mental health specialties as it tries to bring in dozens of new mental health personnel in 2024. 

The Navy is creating 10 new seven-member Special Psychiatric Rapid Intervention Teams (SPRINT) to provide emergency mental health care following traumatic events, such as suicides.

In a statement, the service acknowledges that the  “Navy faces challenges in recruiting and retaining specialties critical…the mission due to nation-wide shortages of healthcare providers and long training pipelines.”

Ideas like turning over the carrier to locally based ship building crews, or adding more mental health care providers to ships aren’t new, but they haven’t been a priority because they’re potentially expensive. There are some ideas don’t cost a lot of money, Cordle said.

“A big point is the leadership,” he said. “When you look back over some of the incidents that we've had, when you peel back the onion, a lot of the stress was sort of imposed by the leadership either not paying attention, maybe not toxic leadership, but leadership that wasn't attuned to listen.”

The USS George Washington is using a tool borrowed from Naval Aviation that assesses the fitness of pilots. The Navy uses it to assess each sailor on the carrier. 

In Aviation,, green means pilots are safe to fly. Red means they’re grounded and need care, while yellow indicates they’re showing signs of stress either in their career or personal life that the command has to monitor, said Command Master Chief Randy Swanson, who joined the Navy in 1996.

“Even though it's not an issue at work, if there are things going on, we talk about it,” Swanson said. “This is something that never happened back in the day. It was never brought up, unless it was an issue. But now we're getting ahead of things like, is there a daycare issue with this sailor or a problem with a car?  How do we help this sailor out so it doesn’t become an issue?” 

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