With missiles flying in the Middle East, US Navy focuses on mental health
Just a few days before a career Special Forces soldier detonated a rental truck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, the U.S. Department of Defense released a report on the mental health of its troops.
Psychological struggles among active-duty forces have risen roughly 40% over the past four years, it found, driven by anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Service members receiving care for such conditions occupied more hospital beds in 2023 than those being treated for any other malady, accounting for some 55% of these stays.
The Navy in particular outpaced the other services for depression diagnoses and last year reported the highest suicide rates since it began releasing this data six years ago. “We’re going to be focused on this for a long time in the future,” Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations, told the Senate Committee on Armed Services this past May.
Why We Wrote This
The U.S. military reports its troops are experiencing increased levels of mental health distress. In the Navy, one approach to meeting sailors’ needs involves offering more chaplain support.
Such ebbs and flows in troops’ mental health can be difficult to dissect. Matthew Livelsberger, the Green Beret involved in the Las Vegas incident, had complained of the effects of traumatic brain injury and combat stress from the violence he saw and inflicted during multiple deployments to Afghanistan. The Army says he didn’t show any concerning behavior up to that point.
While the explosion, in which Mr. Livelsberger was the sole fatality, underscores the need for more military mental health services, the risk of extreme violence is far lower than issues of stress, excessive anger, and substance abuse, analysts say.
In response, the Navy is working to provide more such services, including those that focus on the spiritual needs of sailors. Navy officials have expressed concern that their troops at sea now face an “unprecedented” pace of dangerous operations. Admiral Franchetti told lawmakers that the Navy must bring mental health help closer to these forces.
As part of its push to do this, the Navy has pledged to increase the size of its chaplain corps for the first time since the Cold War. The service last year announced plans to hire about 45 chaplains, bringing the total to 905. But while openings have increased, the challenge is filling them; the service’s supply of chaplains has remained “relatively flat,” a Navy official says.
The recruiting ground is wide, however, since chaplains can come from more than 220 faith groups recognized by the U.S. military, including Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and Muslims. They offer both formal and informal counseling as well as religious services, and can serve as the unofficial conscience for military leadership: Flogging of sailors ended in 1850, for example, after U.S. Navy chaplains protested the practice.
The hope is that tending to the spirit can help lend some perspective to fighting forces grappling with the daily strain and danger of ship life, says Rear Adm. Gregory Todd, head of the U.S. Navy’s chaplain corps.
“That sense of being something bigger than yourself – shared purpose and really a sense of sacrifice are spiritual values,” he adds. “We help sailors make sense of what they’re doing out there.”
Combat like “we haven’t seen since World War II”
One week after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the strike group from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier was off to the Middle East, diverted from its original mission, which was to include European port calls.
Instead, U.S. Navy sailors encountered some of the most intense naval clashes anyone could remember, fending off attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
There were days when crews fought off uncrewed aerial vehicles, including quadcopters, in waves of 20 or 30 and barrages of missiles faster than the speed of sound. They repelled underwater drone attacks and self-detonating remote-controlled boats.
It was combat “on a level we haven’t seen since World War II,” says Capt. Edward “Ted” Pledger, commodore of Destroyer Squadron 22 in the Eisenhower strike group – an assessment echoed by top U.S. commanders.
It was stressful for the sailors, he says. “You’re under this constant threat of attack, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
The chaplains on hand were a first line of defense when it came to processing the combat, Mr. Pledger says. They would circulate around the ship where pockets of sailors were gathered and get group chats going. “They would say, ‘Hey, here’s what we saw,’ and ‘How’s everybody doing?’”
During hostilities, the Eisenhower strike group’s chaplains would often check in on the combat information center of one of the strike group’s four destroyers – the tactical heart of the warship where sonar and radar sweeps help commanders repel inbound drones and missiles.
The chaplains stayed out of the way but were on hand to help process what was happening in near-real time.
“Maybe you had 15 minutes of intensely responding to these attacks. And then when the officer says, ‘I think we’ve got a break here,’ the chaplain can talk to those sailors that maybe look a little shook,” says Rear Admiral Todd, who was a first responder at ground zero after 9/11.
The point, he adds, is “to help that sailor unpack that recent experience so that it doesn’t linger.”
There were the anxieties about being on the receiving end of inbound missiles, but an awareness, too, “of the lethality of what we’re doing, even though they’re the bad guys,” Rear Admiral Todd says.
Ordering troops to fire missiles “is a very, very intimate interaction” for sailors, he adds.
The question for the chaplains is “How can we as leaders help them – and create an environment where they can function well and return from combat a whole person?”
A calming presence
During these deployments, U.S. Navy crews weren’t just responsible for the safety of their own ships – they shot down missiles heading toward civilian vessels as well.
When one such tanker was hit and destroyed, the battle group helped evacuate its Filipino crew to safety aboard the USS Eisenhower.
A Catholic priest from the Eisenhower with ties to the Philippines was able to translate and be “a calming presence,” says Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Rice, who commands chaplains on the battle group’s four destroyer ships. “It was pretty amazing.”
Missions that involved protecting civilian ships crossing the Red Sea in particular lifted the spirits of U.S. troops, he says. “It really gave the sailors a sense of purpose.”
Low points for troops were finding out that the ship’s deployment would be extended and port calls canceled.
“It was mentally challenging,” in large part because breaks off the ship are a widely coveted chance “just to have time by yourself,” says Lt. Keith Villanueva, a weapons officer.
The Navy chaplain corps worked throughout the deployment to create outlets for tired troops and to keep them connected during long days away from family.
One chaplain started a parent support group, which recorded videos of their members reading stories to their children. Another organized a book club focused on leadership. There were chaplain-led seminars, too, on ethics and world religions.
In his previous deployments, Lieutenant Villanueva didn’t make much use of services the chaplains were offering. There was the stigma, he says, that came with seeking help. “Especially where I was at that time, I thought it could make me look, I guess maybe, weak, for lack of a better word.”
But deployments can mean “a lot of extra challenges” for families, and he decided, he says, to lean into his faith and the community that came with it.
“I made myself available,” he says. “And it just made the deployment so much more rewarding and peaceful.”
It’s a feeling the chaplains endeavor to pass along. As he was making rounds between the battle group’s destroyers, from intelligence hubs to engine rooms, Lieutenant Commander Rice was often approached by sailors anxious to hear how friends on other ships were doing.
Those exchanges often became key moments of connection and conversation about the “strength of the spirit,” he adds. “Not even necessarily about our own faith, but about what makes you who you are – and what drives you to do what you do.”
Editor’s note: This story, originally published on Jan. 28, was updated with a more comprehensive list of the faiths that U.S. military chaplains represent.
