Posts Tagged ‘soldiers’

After surviving war in Iraq, U.S. troops now being killed by Big Pharma

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Natural News, February 17, 2011

by Mike Adams, Editor, NaturalNews.com

They survived live fire, explosive devices, terror attacks and grueling desert conditions. But upon returning home to seek treatment for the mental anguish that too often accompanies war, U.S. soldiers are now being killed by the pharmaceutical industry in record numbers.

A recent example is found with the late Senior Airman Anthony Mena, who returned home from Baghdad only to be killed by a toxic cocktail of prescription medications in his apartment in the USA. As the New York Times reports, a toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/u…).

Those drugs included painkillers, sleeping pills, antidepressants and a sedative. The medical examiner concluded that Anthony Mena died of multiple pharmaceutical toxicity. He was only 23 years old.

Big Pharma killing more soldiers than enemy combatants?

Anthony Mena is just one of a fast-rising number of U.S. soldiers who are being drugged to death by psychiatrists and physicians who dish out painkillers and psychotropic drugs with virtually no regard to their chemical interactions.

Those interactions are never tested in clinical trials (yes, never!). The position of the FDA and Big Pharma seems to be that the more drugs a person takes, the better they’ll get, and doctors are trained in med schools to keep prescribing pills with virtually no concern about the extreme toxicity of various pharmaceutical combinations. Their motto is, “For every ill, there’s another pill.”

Now the body count is rising. Today, one-third of the U.S. Army is on at least one prescription medication, and many of those are psychiatric meds used to treat PTSD.

Think about that astounding statistic for a moment: One-third of the U.S. Army is on synthetic chemicals! Some of those chemicals, by the way, have been linked to suicides and violent behavior, especially in young males. What kind of formula for warfare is that, anyway? Take a young male, put a rifle in his hands and a psychiatric medication in his head, then let him loose on the front lines and see what happens?

An Army report says that 101 soldiers have died from toxic pharmaceutical combinations in 2006 – 2009, but that report almost certainly vastly underestimates the true numbers. Most deaths are traditionally written off as organ failure of one kind or another. Very few pharmaceutically-induced deaths are ever accurately tracked back to the drugs involved… unless you’re Michael Jackson, of course.

It makes you wonder: Are more soldiers being killed by Big Pharma than by enemy combatants?

It’s not out of the question. The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed just over 3,000 Americans. Yet, according to well-researched estimates based on published scientific studies, FDA-approved prescription drugs currently kill anywhere from 98,000 – 250,000 Americans a year (http://www.naturalnews.com/009278.html). Remember, that’s every year!

Big Pharma’s link to Nazi concentration camps

Over the last decade, then, FDA-approved prescription drugs have likely killed at least one million Americans and probably many more. That’s approaching the level of a chemical holocaust. The last time so many people were killed with chemicals was in the Nazi era of World War II, when Nazi war criminals gassed Jews to death by the millions.

It’s no coincidence, by the way, that the very same chemical companies that worked for the Nazi war machine are now some of the world’s top pharmaceutical manufacturers. That’s not an internet myth, by the way: It’s an historical fact. Just Google the history of  Bayer and Nazi Germany if you want to learn more: http://www.google.com/search?q=baye…

Or check out the role of IG Farben /Bayer in Auschwitz and other German concentration camps, where this pharmaceutical company relied on slave labor to churn out chemical weapons and experimental drugs used in human medical experiments: http://archive.corporatewatch.org/p…

(You won’t read that in the New York Times, most likely…)

Fast forward to the present. Now the pharmaceutical industry is killing our young soldiers in record numbers. Much of it is due to the insanity that’s inbred throughout the psychiatric industry, which has a long and disturbing history of torturing and maiming patients in the name of “medicine.”

I strongly urge you to learn about the true history of psychiatry through the Citizens Commission on Human Rights: http://www.cchr.org/quick-facts/the…

I have walked through their museum in Los Angeles, and I’ve seen what psychiatric medicine has done to destroy the lives of countless children, adults and even soldiers. What’s happening today with psychiatric medicine is, by any honest assessment, a crime against humanity that makes the casualties of war in Iraq seem tiny by comparison.

And now, even the mainstream media is beginning to see this truth. It’s hard to deny it when young, healthy soldiers start dropping dead from following doctors’ orders and taking FDA-approved medications. These are not overdoses, folks. These are soldiers following orders and “taking their medicine” as directed.

And they’re dying from it.

The New York Times article on this issue is a great read. It’s an example of stunningly good journalism from the mainstream media, and I recommend you read it: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/u…

The NYT, of course, probably won’t go into the history of Bayer and the Nazi war crimes connection, but you can only expect the mainstream media to go so far on these stories. For the whole truth on issues like this, you have to turn to internet sites like NaturalNews which simply aren’t driven by pharmaceutical advertising money. That’s where you’ll find out the rest of the story that the MSM isn’t likely to ever report.

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Johnny Got His Pills

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

SF Weekly, October 27, 2010

by E.R. BILLS

After U.S. Army Sgt. Douglas Hale, Jr. finished 15 months in Iraq for his second combat tour, it was obvious that things in his life were awry. In 2007, he was diagnosed with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. He began drinking heavily, and his marriage fell apart. In early 2009, Hale abandoned his post at Fort Hood. Last May, he was arrested for being absent without leave and returned to Fort Hood. Before the month was out, he tried to kill himself.

post-traumatic-stress-trap_1

The Army sent Hale for treatment at a psychiatric hospital in Denton, and it seemed to help. He spent the Fourth of July weekend with his mother, and she drove him back to Fort Hood the next day. On July 6, his mother received a text message from him that said, “I love you mom im so sorry I hope u and family and god can forgive me.” She immediately contacted Army officials at Fort Hood and started driving back. But Hale had already shot himself in the head.

Army officials are reportedly searching for solutions regarding the suicides of soldiers like Hale, but they’re not looking real hard. The answers are right under their noses.

War is hell under any circumstances. But in the case of Americans serving these days in the Middle East, it’s worse than that — it’s a planned, coordinated societal psychosis.

If you plop a normal, all-American boy or girl down in a psychotic situation for months and years at a time, tour after extended tour, psychosis or extreme disturbance is not an abnormal response. And it can lead to suicide. Especially when the nation that sent these men and women into harm’s way still hasn’t clearly justified why this madness was necessary.

I read an Associated Press story the other day that suggested that one of Big Pharma’s wonder drugs was killing American GIs. It said that many of the soldiers serving in and returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were taking a drug called Seroquel to help them deal with chronic restlessness, severe insomnia, and constant nightmares. If I were a soldier it might have made me laugh.

Seroquel, according to the story, is a “potent antipsychotic.” Instead of reducing combat tours to reasonable timeframes, limiting the number of tours a soldier has to endure, or simply removing unstable soldiers from these ill-conceived wars indefinitely, the U.S. military is apparently using our men and women in uniform as guinea pigs for a soldier’s-little-helper pill that will supposedly desensitize them to the insanity around them.

It doesn’t cure the psychosis. It simply allows unstable soldiers to function within the insanity without being terribly bothered by it. And when you combine Seroquel with antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs — something military officials suggest is an acceptable “standard of care” for soldiers or veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder — it’s not surprising if they walk around in a cognitive fog.

In this regard, isn’t the military’s attempt to pharmaceutically abridge the humanity of our soldiers plainly evil? If you have to give someone a potent anti-psychotic to help them deal with what they’re doing or what they’ve done for you or God or country, then there’s obviously something wrong with what you’re asking them to do. It reminds me of perhaps the grimmest excerpt from Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front: “We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts.”

Oh, and did I mention Seroquel is more than just one of the military’s most frequently prescribed drugs? It’s also the fifth best-selling drug in the nation. So if our psychotic naiveté and ignorance ever start to really get to us, we can always knock them back with our own dose of a brain-fuddling stupefacient. In fact, we’ve already been at it.

In 2008, American emergency rooms treated a million people for abusing prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines, roughly the same number of folks our ERs treated for heroin and cocaine overdoses or abuses of other illegal drugs — and this number doesn’t even factor in alcohol.

We’re taking the edge off our insanity any way we can. The only war more stupid and psychotic than the one in Iraq was the one on drugs. But it’s been going on so long that its mention no longer even penetrates our daze.

The military-pharmaceutical complex is making a killing or, more specifically, making a fortune off the folks we’ve asked to do the killing — and off the rest of us. They dope our unruly kids, they dope the young men and women fighting in and returning home from the war, and they dope the rest of us right here at home for being sick of wars overseas and fearful of war on the middle and lower classes and dreading the reckonings to come and being ashamed of our own sad national shadow.

And the treatment is working. Thank God we’re more susceptible to psychotropic manipulation than Sgt. Hale was.

http://www.fwweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4294:johnny-got-his-pills&catid=3:second-thought&Itemid=374

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

The US Military’s Drugged Troops: Survey finds at least 1 in 6 service members is on some form of psychiatric drug

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Pharmalot
By Ed Silverman
August 31, 2010

The widely used Seroquel antipsychotic was never approved to treat post-traumatic stress disorder or the insomnia sometimes related to the afflication, but that hasn’t stopped the drug from being prescribed for that purpose by the US Department of Veteran Affairs and, in the process, becoming one of the VA’s biggest expenditures.

Since 2001, VA spending on Seroquel jumped more than 770 percent, while the number of patients covered by the VA increased just 34 percent, the Associated Press writes. Seroquel is now the VA’s second-biggest prescription drug expenditure since 2007, behind the Plavix bloodthinner. The agency spent $125.4 million last fiscal year on Seroquel, up from $14.4 million in 2001, and the growth in spending outpaces the growth in personnel who have gone through the military during that time.

Meanwile, thousands of soldiers have taken the med, and several soldiers and veterans have died, raising concerns among some military families the government is not being forthcoming about the risks, the AP writes, noting that they want Congress to investigate. The trend, by the way, is not confined to Seroquel. An investigation earlier this year found that at least one in six service members is on some form of psychiatric drug (background).

According to the VA, Seroquel is only prescribed as a third or fourth option for patients with difficult-to-treat insomnia stemming from PTSD, the AP writes. And the US Defense Department’s deputy director for force health protection, Michael Kilpatrick, tells the news service that the government has not seen any increase in dangerous side effects from Seroquel and other drugs.

Read entire article:  http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/08/the-military-post-traumatic-stress-and-seroquel/

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Antipsychotic Drugs, U.S. Vets & Sudden Deaths: Families Call on Congress to Investigate

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Note from CCHR:  Our psychiatric drug database lists FDA advisory warnings on Seroquel causing sudden death, death, suicide, suicidal ideation, heart problems, as well as a Journal of Toxicology report dating back to 2001, warning of antipsychotic drugs causing stroke, cerebrovascular events (such as loss of brain function) seizures, toxicity, confusion and coma. Simply keyword search Seroquel here (or for a broader search, newer antipsychotics)  http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/drug_warnings.php

Questions loom over drug given to sleepless vets

By MATTHEW PERRONE (AP) – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON — Andrew White returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq beset with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness. Doctors tried to ease his symptoms using three psychiatric drugs, including a potent anti-psychotic called Seroquel.

Thousands of soldiers suffering from PTSD have received the same medication over the last nine years, helping to make Seroquel one of the Veteran Affairs Department’s top drug expenditures and the No. 5 best-selling drug in the nation.

Several soldiers and veterans have died while taking the pills, raising concerns among some military families that the government is not being up front about the drug’s risks. They want Congress to investigate.

In White’s case, the nightmares persisted. So doctors recommended progressively larger doses of Seroquel. At one point, the 23-year-old Marine corporal was prescribed more than 1,600 milligrams per day — more than double the maximum dose recommended for schizophrenia patients.

A short time later, White died in his sleep.

“He was told if he had trouble sleeping he could take another (Seroquel) pill,” said his father, Stan White, a retired high school principal.

An investigation by the Veterans Affairs Department concluded that White died from a rare drug interaction. He was also taking an antidepressant and an anti-anxiety pill, as well as a painkiller for which he did not have a prescription. Inspectors concluded he received the “standard of care” for his condition.

It’s unclear how many soldiers have died while taking Seroquel, or if the drug definitely contributed to the deaths. White has confirmed at least a half-dozen deaths among soldiers on Seroquel, and he believes there may be many others.

Spending for Seroquel by the government’s military medical systems has increased more than sevenfold since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. That by far outpaces the growth in personnel who have gone through the system in that time.

Seroquel is approved to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression, but it has not been endorsed by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for insomnia. However, psychiatrists are permitted to prescribe approved drugs for other uses in a common practice known as “off-label” prescribing.

But the drug’s potential side effects, including diabetes, weight gain and uncontrollable muscle spasms, have resulted in thousands of lawsuits. While on Seroquel, White gained 40 pounds and experienced slurred speech, disorientation and tremors — all known side effects.

Last year, researchers at Vanderbilt University published a study suggesting a new risk: sudden heart failure.

The study in the January 2009 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine found that there were three cardiac deaths per year for every 1,000 patients taking anti-psychotic drugs like Seroquel. Seroquel’s unique sedative effect sets it apart from others in its class as the top choice for treating insomnia and anxiety.

AstraZeneca PLC, maker of the drug, said it is reviewing the study. The FDA is conducting its own review, citing the limited scope of the Vanderbilt study.

According to the Veterans Affairs Department, Seroquel is only prescribed as a third or fourth option for patients with difficult-to-treat insomnia stemming from PTSD.

Marine Cpl. Chad Oligschlaeger, 21, was being treated for PTSD when he died in his sleep at Camp Pendleton, Calif., in May 2008. Oligschlaeger was taking six types of medication, including Seroquel, to deal with anxiety and nightmares that followed two tours of duty in Iraq.

The military medical examiner attributed the death to “multiple drug toxicity,” indicating that Oligschlaeger, too, died from a drug interaction. Because of the complex reactions between various drugs, medical examiners do not attribute such deaths to any one medication.

After consulting with physicians, parents Eric and Julie Oligschlaeger now believe their son died of sudden cardiac arrest caused by Seroquel.

“Right now, I’m so angry, and I believe someone needs to be held accountable,” said Julie Oligschlaeger, of Austin, Texas. “The protocol absolutely has to change.”

The Defense Department’s deputy director for force health protection, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, said the government has not seen any increase in dangerous side effects from Seroquel and other drugs.

Physicians interviewed by the AP said they began prescribing Seroquel because it was the only drug that offered relief from the nightmares and anxiety of PTSD.

“By accident, some people were giving them Seroquel for anxiety or depression, and the veterans said, ‘This is the first time I have slept six or seven hours straight all night. Please give me more of that.’ And the word spread,” said Dr. Henry Nasrallah of the University of Cincinnati, who has treated PTSD patients for more than 25 years.

Most of the soldiers and veterans seeking treatment for PTSD do so at hospitals run by the VA or the Defense Department.

The VA’s spending on Seroquel has increased more than 770 percent since 2001. In that same time frame, the number of patients covered by the VA increased just 34 percent.

Seroquel has been the VA’s second-biggest prescription drug expenditure since 2007, behind the blood-thinner Plavix. The agency spent $125.4 million last fiscal year on Seroquel, up from $14.4 million in 2001.

Spending on Seroquel by the Department of Defense, has increased nearly 700 percent since 2001, to $8.6 million last year, according to purchase records.

Read the rest of this article here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iPPHBQ6w28w4kTXzANGm6kCzPN1gD9HTRUQ80

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

“The widespread use of antidepressants by soldiers could be contributing to the Army’s escalating suicide rate”

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

USA Today
By Lou A. Murphy
August 3, 2010

The widespread use of antidepressants by soldiers could be contributing to the Army’s escalating suicide rate (“Leaders criticized in Army suicides,” News, Friday).

Antidepressants can increase the risk of suicide or suicidal behavior in certain population groups. The warning required by the Food and Drug Administration on antidepressants states that children and young adults up to age 25 are particularly at risk.

In 2008, Time magazine published the article “America’s Medicated Army.” At that time, it was estimated that 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% in Afghanistan were taking antidepressants or sleeping pills.

Antidepressants alter the brain in ways not fully understood.

Read entire article here:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/letters/2010-08-04-letters04_ST2_N.htm

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Long Awaited Army Report on Suicides Ignores Role of Suicide-Causing Drugs such as Antidepressants/Antipsychotics

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

OpEdNews
By Martha Rosenberg
August 1, 2010

Why are troops killing themselves?

The long awaited Army report, “Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention” considers the economy, the stress of nine years of war, family dislocations, repeated moves, repeated deployments, troops’ risk-taking personalities, waived entrance standards and many aspects of Army culture.

What it barely considers is the suicide-inked antidepressants, antipsychotics and antiseizure drugs whose use exactly parallels the increase in US troop suicides since 2005.

In the report Chief of Staff General Peter W. Chiarelli acknowledges antidepressant risks, saying there’s “fair quality evidence that second generation antidepressants (mostly SSRI) increase suicidal behavior in adults aged 18 to 29 years” but adds that “other research evidence shows the benefit of antidepressant use”.

And nowhere does he acknowledge the suicide potential of antiseizure drugs so widely used for pain and as “mood stabilizers” by troops even though the FDA mandated suicide warnings on Lyrica, Topamaz, Depakote, Lamictal, Tegretol, Depakene, Klonopin and 16 others in 2008.

(Lamictal also has the distinction of wasting more taxpayer money than any other drug according to a July American Enterprise Institute report. Medicaid spent an unnecessary $51 million on Lamictal instead of buying a generic last year, thanks to GSK salesmen. You go, guys,)

When asked by NPR’s Robert Siegel if the high number of medicated troops contributed to suicide, Gen. Chiarelli said, “The good thing about those numbers is…the prescriptions were all made by a doctor.” Asked why troops who had not even deployed were among the suicides, Chiarelli said there were other stressors involved.

In June Marine Times reported 32 deaths on prescription drugs in Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) since 2007 and said an internal review “found the biggest risk factor may be putting a soldier on numerous drugs simultaneously, a practice known as polypharmacy.”

But instead of citing dangerous drugs and drug cocktails for turning troops suicidal (and accident prone and at risk of death from unsafe combinations) the Army report cites troops’ illicit use of them along with street drugs. (The word “illicit” appears 150 times in the Army report and “psychiatrist” appears twice.)

No, it’s not the 8,000 urine samples in 2009 which showed prescription drug traces according to the Army report — it’s the fact that 21 percent of the drugs were “illicit.”

No wonder the revised suicide report form suggested by the Army report doesn’t even have a box to enter “adverse reactions to drug or drug combinations.” Instead, it has a box that asks how long before a suicide a patient was “compliant” with the prescription. Was the medication “taken as prescribed? Skipped?” Taken “In excess of prescription? In different manner (e.g., crushed instead of in capsule)?”

Read entire article here:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/Army-Suicide-Report-Ignore-by-Martha-Rosenberg-100801-596.html?show=votes

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Psychiatric drug use skyrockets in U.S. military

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Natural News
By David Gutierrez
July 26, 2010

Use of prescription psychotropics has skyrocketed among U.S. military personnel in recent years, according to an investigation by Military Times.

At least 17 percent of active-duty military personnel are currently taking an antidepressant, including as many as 6 percent of all deployed troops. In contrast, the rate of antidepressant use in the wider U.S. public is only 10 percent.

Overall, one in six military service members takes at least one type of psychiatric drug. The numbers are probably higher than estimated, since troops are also known to share and trade prescription drugs with each other, even while in combat zones.

Data obtained from the Defense Logistics Agency show that overall use of psychiatric drugs increased by 76 percent between 2001 and 2009. More specifically, use of anti-seizure drugs increased 70 percent, use of sedatives and anxiety drugs increased 170 percent, and antipsychotic use increased 200 percent.

Spending on anticonvulsants increased from $16 million to $35 million per year, spending on anxiety drugs and sedatives increased from $6 million to $17 million, and spending on antipsychotics increased from $4 million to $16 million.

Although antidepressants are among the drugs most commonly taken by military personnel, their use increased only 40 percent between 2001 and 2009. Spending actually dropped by 16 percent, likely reflecting the new availability of less-expensive generic drugs.

According to a 2009 study by the Veterans Affairs Administration, approximately 60 percent of psychiatric drug use by military personnel is for “off-label” uses not approved by the FDA. Thus, antipsychotic drugs intended for the treatment of schizophrenia are now being widely prescribed for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms such as anger, headaches, nervousness and nightmares.

“Patients may be exposed to drugs that have problematic side effects without deriving any benefit,” said Robert Rosenheck of Yale University. “We just don’t know. There haven’t been very many studies.”

Further compounding concern over side effects, many troops regularly mix two or more drugs together into untested cocktails. The effects of multiple drugs acting in unison have rarely been tested. When both drugs act on the same organ — in this case, the brain — the chance of unforeseen interactions is even greater.

“In the case of poly-drug use — the ‘cocktail’ — where you are combining an antidepressant, an anticonvulsant, an antipsychotic, and maybe a stimulant to keep this guy awake — that has never been tested,” Breggin said.

Among the side effects that some health professionals worry about are impaired motor skills, reduced reaction time, increased suicide risk, irritability, aggressiveness and hostility.

“Imagine causing that in men and women who are heavily armed and under a great deal of stress,” psychiatrist Peter Breggin said.

Read entire article:  http://www.naturalnews.com/029285_psychiatric_drugs_military.html

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | 1 Comment »

Freedom of Information Act request made to Pentagon officials regarding alarming drug overdoses in our armed forces

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Air Force Times
By Andrew Tilghman and Brendan McGarry
June 6, 2010

Prescription drug cocktails have lead to at least 32 accidental overdoses among Marines and soldiers since 2007, bringing military medical practices for treating physical and psychiatric problems under scrutiny.

At least 30 soldiers and two Marines overdosed while under the care of Army Warrior Transition Units or the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Regiment, created three years ago to tightly focus care and attention on troops suffering from injuries as a result of combat.

Most of the troops had been prescribed “drug cocktails,” combinations of drugs including painkillers, sleeping pills, antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, interviews and records show. In all cases, suicide was ruled out.

Army officials say the deaths are often complicated by troops mixing medications with alcohol, taking their own medications incorrectly or without a prescription.

It is unclear how many troops across the entire military have died from drug toxicity. Pentagon officials have not provided information about accidental drug deaths across the military despite a Military Times Freedom of Information Act request submitted nearly two months ago. Data on military deaths is compiled by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and maintained at the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower Data Center.

The Army deaths have shocked that service’s medical community and prompted an internal review. But despite a “safety stand down” in January 2009, the number of fatalities continued to rise last year — to 15 in 2009, up from 11 the year before. Meanwhile the total number of soldiers assigned to the 29 WTUs nationwide dropped from about 12,000 to about 9,000.

The internal review found the biggest risk factor may be putting a soldier on numerous drugs simultaneously, a practice known as polypharmacy. According to an Army analysis from June 2009, about 9 percent of WTU patients — 800 soldiers — were prescribed a combination of drugs that included pain, psychiatric and sleep medications.

As a result, the Army medical community has begun to question the widespread practice of polypharmacy and has quietly overhauled the way it prescribes, distributes and monitors the riskiest drugs.

Read entire article:  http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2010/06/military_drug_deaths_060710w/

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

“Drugged Warriors: Sharp Rise in U.S. Military Psychiatric Drug Use and Suicides” by Psychologist Bruce Levine

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Sharp Rise in U. S. Military Psychiatric Drug Use and Suicides

CounterPunch
By Bruce E. Levine
April 2, 2010

One in six service members is now taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to the Navy Times, with many soldiers taking “drug cocktail” combinations. Soldiers and military healthcare providers told the Military Times that psychiatric drugs are “being prescribed, consumed, shared and traded in combat zones.”

The Navy Times reporters Andrew Tilghman and Brendan McGarry also noted that there has been a large increase in military suicides. From 2001 to 2009, the Army’s official suicide rate increased from 9 per 100,000 soldiers to 23 per 100,000. During that same period, the Marine Corps suicide rate increased from 16.7 per 100,000 soldiers to 24 per 100,000.

A Military Times investigation of records obtained from the Defense Logistics Agency revealed that the DLA spent $1.1 billion on psychiatric and pain medications from 2001 to 2009, and that there was a 76 percent increase in psychiatric drugs. DLA records show:

• Antipsychotic drugs spiked most dramatically — orders jumping by more than 200 percent.

• Orders for anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills such as Valium and Ambien increased 170 percent.

• Orders for antiepileptic drugs (also known as anticonvulsants) such as Depakote, routinely used as psychiatric medications, increased 70 percent.

• Antidepressants showed a 40 percent increase.

Investigators found that antipsychotic and antiepileptic drugs, approved for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, are now commonly used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms such as nightmares, nervousness, and anger outbursts. The use of antipsychotic drugs for non-psychotic conditions such as PTSD is called “off-label” prescribing. The general public is also subject to off-label prescribing, which is considered legal.

Read entire article:  http://www.counterpunch.org/levine04022010.html

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | 1 Comment »