While World Mental Health Day on 10 October gave us an important opportunity to talk about mental wellbeing at sea, it was also a good time to look carefully at the way we talk about the subject. There is a tendency to portray seafaring as a profession facing a mental health crisis unlike almost any other, and while nobody should underestimate the pressures that come with working at sea, I am not convinced the evidence supports this.
Seafarers can spend months away from their families and friends, working long hours in demanding conditions while dealing with disrupted sleep, isolation and the everyday pressures of living and working alongside the same relatively small group of people. Those challenges are very real, and the industry has a responsibility to make sure people have somewhere to turn when they are struggling. At the same time, anxiety, depression, loneliness and stress are not unique to shipping. They affect people in almost every profession and every part of society, and we should be wary of creating the impression that going to sea inevitably means suffering poor mental health.
Suicide is perhaps the clearest example of why we need to be careful with the statistics. Research into UK merchant shipping covering the period from 1919 to 2005 found that suicide rates fell considerably over time, from around 40 to 50 per 100,000 seafarers in the 1920s to below 10 per 100,000 during the later years covered by the research. The authors concluded that, although merchant seafaring had historically been a high risk occupation for suicide, the rate had become more comparable with that of the general British population.
However, there is evidence pointing in the other direction too. A large Swedish study published in 2024 found elevated suicide mortality among some groups of seafarers, particularly crew members and those who began their careers during earlier periods. The bigger problem is that we still lack consistent international data that would allow us to say with confidence exactly where seafarers sit compared with other occupations today.
We also need to look carefully at how deaths at sea are classified. Where somebody is witnessed accidentally falling overboard, the circumstances may be relatively clear. Where nobody sees what happened, however, it can be much more difficult to establish whether somebody fell accidentally or deliberately entered the water. When an unexplained fall or disappearance is subsequently treated as a suicide, there is a risk that genuine accidents become part of the suicide statistics and the overall figure is overstated.
This is an issue InterManager has been looking at closely through our own work on falls from height and falls overboard. We regularly publish statistics on fall accidents, with our latest figures covering incidents from 2012 to 1 September 2026. By looking at where falls happen, who is involved and the circumstances surrounding them, we are trying to build a clearer picture of a serious safety issue which can sometimes become blurred when discussing suicide statistics.
Building a reliable picture is not easy. Ships are working environments where accidental falls can and do happen, and the absence of a witness does not in itself tell us why somebody entered the water. There is also the challenge of obtaining consistent information from across the industry, including from P&I Clubs, which may hold relevant claims and casualty information but where accessing comparable data can be difficult.
Different studies also cover different nationalities, fleets, time periods and working environments, while deaths and disappearances at sea are not always recorded consistently. All of this makes meaningful international comparisons extremely difficult and is why we should be cautious about drawing sweeping conclusions from the figures we do have.
For me, that uncertainty is a reason to improve the evidence, not to reach for the most alarming statistic available. We can acknowledge that seafaring presents particular challenges without assuming that every mental health problem must be more severe at sea than it is ashore.
None of this means we should become complacent. Every suicide is a tragedy and anyone experiencing serious mental distress deserves support, whether they are on a ship or sitting in an office. Shipping should continue improving access to confidential counselling, shore based support and communication with families, but just as importantly we need onboard cultures where people feel comfortable speaking when something is wrong.
Good leadership has a huge part to play in that. A captain, superintendent or colleague who knows the people around them will often notice when somebody has become withdrawn, is struggling or simply does not seem themselves, and sometimes starting a conversation can be the most important first step.
Mental health should ultimately be approached in much the same way as physical health. We need to understand the risks, provide appropriate support and encourage people to seek professional help when they need it, while resisting the temptation to portray seafarers as inevitably vulnerable simply because they work at sea. If we want to improve mental wellbeing across shipping, the conversation needs compassion, but it also needs perspective and good evidence.