A call for mandatory reporting on deaths by suicide for military members and public safety personnel by the National Collaborative on PTSD

Research has shown that members of the military, public safety personnel and those who have retired from or left these professions are at higher risk of death by suicide than the general Canadian population. Despite this, there is currently no accurate, surveillance-based national data or compulsory review of suicides — leaving the true scale and circumstances of these deaths uncertain.

Rates of lifetime suicidal ideation vary across military and public safety professions, ranging from 20.5% among municipal and provincial police to 41.1% among paramedics.  Further, in a national study published in 2024, serving Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) members were more than five times as likely as the general Canadian population to report having made a suicide plan in the past year. Suicide mortality is also higher among military Veterans. The 2021 Veteran Suicide Mortality Study found that male Veterans are 1.5 times more likely and female Veterans are almost twice as likely to die by suicide than the broader Canadian population.

In the absence of a national database, existing estimates rely on secondary sources of information such as information shared in obituaries, social media and through word of mouth. That is not good enough for those who have served Canada and protected us at home and abroad.

Two years ago, the Government of Canada published the National Suicide Prevention Action Plan. One outcome identified is to have “a robust monitoring infrastructure with more complete and timely national data on suicide and related behaviours to support understanding and inform effective interventions for suicide prevention” by 2027. There has unfortunately been limited movement on the action plan as it is lacking a strategy to monitor implementation.

We know addressing this issue will require collaborative action across all sectors. In 2022, 19 member organizations from across Canada came together to form the National Collaborative on PTSD — a community established to partner with organizations focused on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the broader mental health landscape who all share a commitment to supporting, through collective action, the mental health and well-being of those impacted by PTSD and their Families. Our unified message is clear: better data is needed and it’s needed now. In recent years, deaths by suicide amongst current and former members of the military and public safety personnel have continued to occur at rates above the general public, with little identified progress towards a system for collecting national data which is critical to an accurate understanding of the scope and scale of this issue.

In recognition of World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10th, we are collectively calling all levels of government to work together to mandate compulsory reporting of suicides in a national database as a foundation for assertive suicide prevention actions with the aim of learning from the tragic deaths in these populations. We are encouraged by news of an upcoming private member’s bill by MP Jake Sawatzky to create a national suicide prevention strategy. Accurate and holistic data is needed to identify risk factors, and interventions require data to properly determine the impacts they have and the areas where more resources are needed. Jurisdictions like the UK and Denmark, who have implemented national surveillance and reporting systems for suicide deaths, have gained improved understanding of risk factors leading to more targeted interventions and policy changes.

As Canadians, we make incredible asks of current and former members of the military and public safety personnel every day. We ask them to be our carers in times of our greatest need. Recognizing the need for Canadians to return this support, the National Collaborative on PTSD is committed to a continued cross-sectoral focus and efforts to building the momentum required to ensure that progress is made on the reporting and tracking of deaths by suicide. We are prepared to work alongside governments, researchers, professional associations, and people with lived and living experience to help build that system. Better data leads to better action, and that action cannot wait.

Members of the National Collaborative,