U.S. Naval Forces Central Command held a mental overall health stand-down this week in Bahrain — much less than two months immediately after the Navy released a mental overall health playbook to raise awareness about mental overall health sources and the responsibilities of commanders.

The stand-down comes amid a two-year, mental overall health pilot system in Bahrain aimed at expanding mental overall health choices for sailors and their households, ushering in a revamped stroll-in clinic and an intensive outpatient system.

The stand-down, April 12-13, integrated mental overall health presentations from pros to create awareness with regards to assistance solutions out there to sailors and their households.

“This stand-down makes it possible for leaders at just about every level of our organization to raise awareness and improved prepare our teams and households to recognize, go over, avert and address mental overall health issues,” stated Capt. Hamish Kirkland, NAVCENT’s chief of employees, in a Navy news release.

In February, the Navy released a “Mental Wellness Playbook” in an try to facilitate mental overall health conversations involving commanders and their sailors, and eradicate any stigma connected with in search of assistance.

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“We’re conscious of the challenges that lots of have knowledgeable in receiving sailors to the mental overall health sources out there to them,” Rear Adm. Brett Mietus, director of the Navy Culture and Force Resilience Workplace, told reporters in February. The playbook is “a answer to addressing some of these challenges, placing tools in the hands of just about every Navy leader, no matter the rank.”

“Our purpose is that everybody in our wonderful Navy develops a shared understanding about how to conduct mental overall health preventative upkeep for our persons, and then exactly where to go for extra sources,” he stated.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday stated at the annual Surface Navy Association conference in January that suicides in the fleet are a “vexing” dilemma for the Navy, and that present efforts to boost mental overall health have been not adequate.

A total of 70 sailors died by suicide in 2022, an improve from 59 suicides in 2021 and 65 in 2020, according to the Navy. That contains the suicides of 3 sailors assigned to the aircraft carrier George Washington in April 2022.

The Navy’s fiscal 2024 spending budget request asks for $102 million in mental overall health funding – up from the $74 million final year.

“Funds assistance virtual mental overall health initiatives, as properly as efforts to recruit, train, and retain the mental overall health Force to address the fierce competitors for talent in the face of a national shortage of mental overall health providers,” the spending budget document says.

Troops and veterans experiencing a mental overall health emergency can contact 988 and choose alternative 1 to speak with a VA staffer. Veterans, troops or their family members members can also text 838255 or pay a visit to VeteransCrisisLine.net for help.