The family of a British soldier who committed suicide has hired an attorney to look into whether the Army could have prevented his death. Nicki Hart was found dead at Catterick Garrison in Yorkshire in 2022, and an Army Service Inquiry Report has concluded that several opportunities to help the 33-year-old were missed.
Mr. Hart had previously attempted suicide on two occasions in 2012 and 2014 after drinking excessively. In 2021, after a friend took his own life, Hart’s mental health began to deteriorate again. He was sent for mental health support after telling senior officers that he had attempted suicide twice before.
The new report claims there was a “significant shortfall of psychiatrists leading to a longer wait for appointments.” Lawyer Ayse Ince, representing the family, said he also had concerns about the broader culture in the Army that made it difficult to seek support.
The report made more than 40 recommendations and raised the possibility of inquiries into other suicides at the Catterick facility.
The lawyers representing Mr. Hart’s family said a freedom of information request sent to Army authorities earlier this year uncovered six deaths. Two of these were “coroner-confirmed suicides,” and four were deaths “where the mechanism of injury suggests suicide.”
The freedom of information response also revealed that there were 94 soldiers based at Catterick who had recorded at least one incident of self-harm between November 2019 and February 2022.
Data from the UK’s Ministry of Defense shows that there were 283 suicides among the British armed forces between 2004 and 2023. The data also shows that numbers have increased in recent years. For instance, there was one suicide in 2018 and 2019, but six in 2021 and 2022, and seven in 2023.
In the US, a soldier is four times more likely to die by suicide than active combat. Research in 2021 discovered 30,177 suicides over the previous two decades, compared to 7,057 combat deaths.
