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Military suicides surged this year to a record high among active duty troops, continuing a deadly trend that Pentagon officials say is frustrating and they are struggling to counter. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps all saw the rate of suicides go up as well as the overall numbers, with only the Air Force showing a decrease, according to data released by the Pentagon Thursday. Suicides among members of the Reserves and the National Guard also grew. (Baldor, 9/26)

Acting Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville called the report “disheartening and disappointing” in a joint statement. Veteran suicide rates rose 2% in 2017, according to the latest Department of Veterans Affairs numbers released last week. (Kesling, 9/26)

Some 541 service members died by suicide in 2018, including 325 active-duty troops, the report said. The active-duty suicide rate was about 24.8 per 100,000 service members, up from 21.9 in 2017 and 18.7 in 2013. “Although the suicide rate among most of our military populations is comparable to civilian rates, this is hardly comforting, and our numbers are not moving in the right direction,” Elizabeth Van Winkle, the Pentagon’s executive director of force resiliency, told reporters on Thursday. (Lamothe, 9/26)

A senior policy adviser on female veterans issues for the House said she was assaulted last week at the V.A. Medical Center in Washington by a man who slammed his body against hers and then pressed himself against her in the center’s cafe. The woman, Andrea Goldstein, a reserve Navy intelligence officer and a lead staff member for the Women Veterans Task Force on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, was waiting for a smoothie at a cafe in the busy center, which has one of the most celebrated women’s clinics in the Department of Veterans Affairs health system. (Steinhauer, 9/26)