It remains unclear what the conditions on the Lincoln are like now. A crew from CNN visited last month, and did not discover any widespread issues during the three days on board. Several troops mentioned being forced to ration food, and losing weight over “many months”, but when CNN boarded on 7 July, “food was plentiful,” the outlet reported, external. Showers were also hot, although there were some signs of mould.

The US has deployed another battleship to relieve the Lincoln, which should arrive in the Middle East in another week.

The replacement ship, the USS George Washington, has had it’s own history of mental health challenges.

In 2022, a spate of suicides aboard the ship – while it was still docked at a port in Virginia – led to a military inspector’s investigation. The conclusion of the investigation found the deaths were not caused by any one issue, but were the result of several problems related to poor living conditions.

The report, released in May 2023, found that the Navy’s top brass had “let our standards slip – and in doing so we let our people down.”

Dr Harold Kudler, the former head of mental health policy for the US Veterans Administration (VA) says the issue has been studied by the US government for years.

Kudler says the isolation of being aboard a ship, with moments of prolonged boredom followed by “extreme alertness”, can amplify mental-health struggles.

“You don’t know where the front is,” he says, describing the situation aboard the Lincoln.

“Especially in this kind of asynchronistic war that we’re seeing.”

These factors can be overwhelming, for both enlisted troops and officers as well.

“You’re isolated. You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. You’re not even sure what the mission is anymore. And you don’t know when you’re going to come home.”

During World War 2, the military created a training film to help soldiers who may be dealing with “combat irritability”.

The film depicted a sailor who was below deck, tasked with watching machines in an enclosed, lonely room while the war against the enemy raged outside.

“He can’t see the enemy. He doesn’t know what’s going on topside. His job is to watch the two gauges in the engine room,” Kudler says.

The point of the film was to illustrate that troops who don’t directly fire weapons are still “under tremendous stress, high alertness and subject to exhaustion”.

Part of Kudler’s time with the Veteran Administration included studying suicide. Years of research by the VA has determined troops and veterans are at a 50% higher risk of suicide compared to the general American population.

The challenge for the military is to make each soldier and sailor feel like an important part of the overall mission, while also acknowledging some of the monotony of being a cog in a larger machine, he says. To combat the isolation and boredom, troops sometimes do fun activities aboard the ship, like hold singing competitions and picnics on the top deck.

Kudler supports the call by Democrats in Congress to lead an investigation into the situation onboard the Lincoln, and how it got to this point.

“The ship can only perform as well as its crew,” he says.

“Those 5,000 people comprise a community. Not just men and women under stress. It’s a community under stress.”

“The capabilities of the ship fall off as the crew falls off. So if the reports that are being shared are true, one really has to worry.”

Rogers, of the AUSN, has spent weeks at a time on small Navy ships, and says that issues with depression and boredom are normal among military ranks.

“We’re all human beings. We all go through difficult times.”

He blames the media for spreading false information, which he calls “absolutely outrageous”, and is enraged by the harm he says it is causing to the morale of troops and their families.

Troops can be bored or anxious, but the ships they are on have chaplains and mental health counsellors, he says, and the troops are well-equipped to deal with the stress.

Reported talk of sailors debating whether to jump off the ship is overblown, he contends, recalling jokes that were made during his time on an aircraft carrier.

“I remember one guy said, ‘I wish I could parachute outta here,'” he chuckles, dismissing it as “locker room talk”.