Eight Navy Sailors Reportedly Tried To Kill Themselves During Iran War Deployment

The U.S. Navy confirmed eight of its sailors on a deployed aircraft carrier have attempted suicide while at sea.

One of the eight sailors on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group 3 “went overboard” but was rescued while another attempted to do so but was stopped, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao wrote in a letter to Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The strike group has supported combat operations against Iran drying its near record-breaking deployment of 307 days.

Certain family members of the deployed Navy service men and women onboard have expressed concerns over emotional reports of food shortages, decline in morale, burn out, and long waits for mental health appointments, according to the Navy Times.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, came under scrutiny for their comments about the naval vessel’s lengthy deployment time and questioned about the deteriorating mental health reports.

Trump referred to the situation as “fake news reporting from CNN” while speaking to reporters on Aug. 17, days after he said the striker had been deployed, “not nearly long enough.” Hegseth on Aug. 13 called reports of the mental health crisis “misrepresented.”

“What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as ‘fake news’ turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members,” Gillibrand wrote on X Thursday morning. “Our troops and their families make immense sacrifices every single day, yet the president dismissed them with open disrespect.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the Department of War and the Navy for comment but did not get an immediate response.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Admiral Brad Cooper visited the ship in August to assess the situation and alleviate worry.

“Of the U.S. Navy’s 11 active carriers, the Lincoln currently has the lowest number of cases related to mental health,” Cooper said in an Aug. 16 statement to X.

CENTCOM shared with the DCNF that on average, aircraft carrier strike groups report higher numbers of suicides than those reported on the U.S.S. Lincoln strike group. Of the eight reported suicides only two occurred while the strike group was deployed in the Middle East. The others six occurred while the group was out of Operation and stationed at port.

A U.S. naval officer who has deployed on multiple air craft carriers and led a service, told the DCNF that the hardest times for officers are at the start of deployment and during breaks.

CENTCOM also shared a statistic from a recent Navy report, that the U.S.S. Lincoln Strike Group has the highest sailor retention rate of all other Strike Groups in the Navy.

“Sailors are choosing to stay with the strike group after their deployment ends. The reports of bad mental health conditions don’t match the numbers,” the representative from CENTCOM told the DCNF.

“Down periods are the most horrible parts of deployment and when my sailors struggled most. Once you get into gear of your job and in the grove of things at sea, that’s when morale is the highest,” the naval officer said.

The stressors of long deployments, including long separation from family, lack of privacy, and little access to mental health care are significant contributors of mental health crises, according to a 2025 military medicine study on the Navy.

“Compared with the other branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, naval personnel report the highest rates of serious psychological distress … Little research has examined the experiences of service members in the U.S. Navy, and even less so the unique experiences of sailors assigned to Navy ships,” the study found.

Additional research from the National Institutes of Heath (NIH) in 2024 found only 3.2% of studies focused solely on deployed Navy personnel.

“Understanding mental health trajectories in Navy personnel is crucial for improving well-being, readiness, and the development of effective prevention, treatment, and policy support,” NIH the study found.