Jan 13, 2013
"If mentally incapacitated troops are being drugged with dangerous, mind-altering drugs and deployed to battle against their will, how can we say that we have a volunteer army?" asked Alliance for Human Research Protection, the national network dedicated to advancing responsible and ethical medical research practices.
This is just one of the many criticisms being levied against the U.S. military in light of its liberal use of prescription medication, which is now being linked to rising suicide rates among soldiers.
A study released by the Army in June 2009 indicated that nearly as many American troops at home and abroad committed suicide in the first six months of 2006 as the number who had been killed in combat in Afghanistan during the same time period (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...).
An average of 18 American veterans commit suicide every day (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMood......). Now, the increasingly high number of deaths among both veterans and active duty soldiers--including suicides, accidental overdose, and lethal drug interactions--have now been linked to the exponential increase in the prescribing of drugs for post traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other psychological illnesses.(http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/...)
Prior to the Iraq war, American soldiers in combat zones did not take psychiatric medications, according to PBS Frontline documentary The Wounded Platoon, which aired in May 2010. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontli......) But by the time of the 2007 surge more than 20,000 of our deployed troops were taking antidepressants and sleeping pills.
These drugs allowed soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder to remain in combat when they otherwise could not.