From our partners at Newshoggers.com
By Steve Hynd
A bit of news from Danger Room that should give you pause.
An untold number of active-duty troops and recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home with mental health conditions inflicted during service — and their spouses and children are suffering too. Now, with solid data slowly emerging from the nearly decade-long wars, the severity of the crisis is starting to show.
The use of psychiatric medications among 18 to 34-year-olds (both troops and their spouses) soared by 42 percent between 2005 and 2009, Army Times is reporting. Antidepressants were the most commonly prescribed medication, but the use of anti-psychotic meds — like Seroquel, which is used off-label to treat nightmares and insomnia caused by PTSD — nearly doubled. And the use of anti-anxiety drugs, like Xanax, surged by 72 percent.
The numbers are startling, but it’s hardly surprising that prescription drugs have become the Pentagon’s solution of choice, when they’re essentially the only option. With both wars lagging on for years, and troops being redeployed despite psychiatric problems, the military’s fast-tracked efforts at more effective alternatives can’t keep up.
The article goes on to note that many of the drugs being prescribed can cause increase in suicidal thoughts as a side-effect, or have interactions that can kill. We already know suicides among the military are way up and "accidental deaths due to multi-drug use are on the rise — 68 among troops in 2009, compared to 24 in 2001."
This is your hollowed-out military after almost a decade of two dumb occupations. Over a million servicemen and women have rotated through those two occupations and as many as 60% of them may suffer from some kind of PTSD-related mental illness. It's no surprise that Veteran's Administration bills are one of the biggest (usually left unmentioned) fiscal costs of these misadventures in military careerism and political fig-leafing – - but the mental health repercussions to America haven't even begun to really bite yet.
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