 Welcome, I'm joined today by the director of the 21st Century Sailor Office, Carl Thomas, to discuss his role as director, his recommendations for sailors, and his plans to further the 21st Century Sailor Program during his tenure. Sir, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Now, sir, you've been here for a few months now. What are your long-term goals that you hope to accomplish during your tenure? The 21st Century Sailor Office is responsible for a wide range of personnel policies, things like sexual harassment, sexual assault, suicide prevention, alcohol, drug abuse, physical readiness. I tell my team that our day job is to make sure that those policies are current and that they're relevant. Our measure of success really is how well our sailors perform at their job, ensuring that they can come to work in a healthy environment, that our policies set them up for success. My long-term goals, really it's about ensuring that every sailor's behavior is in line with our Navy core values and our Navy's core attributes so that the teams can be stronger, so that the teams flourish, that you can develop that unit pride that makes our Navy so special. So sir, as you know, we are approaching Suicide Prevention Month. What is your message for sailors for caring for themselves and caring for others? The business and the lifestyle that we lead, it's not easy. We ask an awful lot of our sailors and our leaders on a daily basis, and it can be stressful. It can be their work-related stress, personal stress, social stress, financial stress. And I would ask our sailors to look out for one another. I would ask our leaders to find ways to reduce stress in the work environment. We need to have a place, an environment where our sailors feel comfortable, bringing their challenges forward. We need our sailors to feel comfortable if they don't feel well, to go seek help. I would ask sailors to look out and if they know that somebody's hurting to intervene and ask. And it's really all about being human. It's about treating others like you would want to be treated and being there for every sailor every day and following act, ask, care, and treat. So sir, what should sailors be looking for in their interactions with others, other sailors, other family members, maybe their friends? What should we be looking for? So suicides usually occur in sailors that are under a lot of stress and experiencing a multitude of different types of stress. It can be relationship challenges, it can be problems at work, both personal or professional. It can be career transitions or disciplinary or legal issues, financial strain. There's a lot of reasons that members decide to take their own life. And so words and thoughts matter and pay attention to them. And if you hear something that concerns you, act on it and ask if the person's doing all right. There's no harm in asking somebody if they have a firearm. Unfortunately, about 60% of our members that die by suicide use a firearm. So asking if they have a gun, asking if it's locked up, asking if you can hold on to it or maybe even take it to an armory. Those are all viable questions that may be that break in the chain that prevents a suicide. So earlier this year the Navy began the Sailor Assistance and Intercept for Life program or SAIL. Can you tell us about that program and what it means for Sailors? Yeah, so SAIL is a great program. SAIL is a program that we took from the Marine Corps and applied to the Navy. It basically, the critical 90 days following a suicide related behavior, the command will approach a sailor and ask if they'd like to be involved in the sail program. And what it does is it hooks that sailor up with a trained counselor at the Fleet and Family Service Center. And that counselor can talk to the sailor on a frequent basis and maybe bridge that gap between the mental health appointments. It's not replacing the mental health services that those individuals need. But it's that caring contact that has a chance to intervene and make sure and just check up on you and make sure you're getting the treatment that you need and get you through those difficult 90 days such that we can get the sailor back into the command and get them productive and make them feel good about themselves. Awesome, sir. So where can sailors get more information about suicide prevention and the 21st Century Sailor Program? Yeah, so September obviously is Suicide Prevention Month and we have a website dedicated to that. It's www.suicide.navy.mil. There's also a host of resources about the 21st Century Sailor Office on the MPC website and it'll be coming to your My Navy portal here in the near future. So visit those sites, ask questions. If you have concerns, talk to your leadership. We want you to have a very safe September and rest of the year. This is an opportunity for us to re-energize our knowledge about suicide awareness and to take those small acts every day and make sure that you're a shipmate that's looking out for each other. Well, sir, thank you for being here and answering all the questions. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. And thank you all for watching.