Andrew Marr on suicide: what the evidence says · JRE #1589

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

The speaker claimed that a Special Operations Command study, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, found special operators commit suicide at the highest rate in the military and 30% higher than the rest of the force. No public SOCOM report or peer-reviewed study corroborating that specific FOIA'd "30% higher" figure could be located. The most rigorous available research, a 2025 retrospective cohort study in JAMA Network Open covering U.S. Army special operations forces (SOF) from 2004-2012 (not the full multi-service SOCOM population), found the opposite pattern for most measures: Army SOF operators had 70-90% lower rates of nonfatal suicide attempts and suicide ideation than support personnel and the broader regular Army, while completed suicide death rates did not differ significantly between operators and the rest of the force; attempts by operators were, however, more likely to prove fatal when they occurred. This evidence does not support a claim that SOF suicide rates are the highest in the military or 30% above the rest of the force, though it covers a different service population and time period than the internal SOCOM document the speaker described, so it does not rule out that document's existence or figures. Given the absence of a verifiable primary source for the specific 30% figure and the best available peer-reviewed data pointing the opposite direction on attempts and ideation, the claim as stated is unsupported by public evidence.