Are We Giving Our Soldiers Drugs That May Make Them Kill Themselves?

[Guest guest]

** [i believe this issue of people in the military killing

themselves/others will be the impetus needed to finally take action

holding drug makers responsible for knowingly promoting drugs that

cause people to violently act out. Hopefully then, all those

incarcerated for the death of others while under the influence of

psychotropic drugs will be given new trials. -- ]

Are We Giving Our Soldiers Drugs That May Make Them Kill Themselves?

More soldiers than ever are on drugs that have been linked to suicide

and violent behavior.

October 10, 2010  |

 In 2009 there were 160 active duty suicides, 239 suicides within the

total Army including the Reserves, 146 active duty deaths from drug

overdoses and high risk behavior and 1,713 suicide attempts. In

addition to suicide, other out-of-character behavior like domestic

violence is known to erupt from the drugs.

More troops are dying by their own hand than in combat, according to

an Army report titled  " Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide

Prevention. " Not only that, but 36 percent of the suicides were troops

who were never deployed.

The unprecedented suicide rates are accompanied by an unprecedented

rise in psychoactive drug rate among active duty-aged troops, 18 to

34, which is up 85 percent since 2003, according to the military

health plan Tricare. Since 2001, 73,103 prescriptions for Zoloft have

been dispensed, 38,199 for Prozac, 17,830 for Paxil and 12,047 for

Cymbalta says Tricare 2009 data, which includes family prescriptions.

All of the drugs carry a suicide warning label.

In addition to the leap in SSRI antidepressants, prescriptions for the

anticonvulsants Topamax and Neurontin rose 56 percent in the same

group since 2005, says Navy Times -- drugs the FDA warned last year

double suicidal thinking in patients.

In fact, 4,994 troops at Fort Bragg are on antidepressants right now,

says theFayetteville Observer. Six-hundred-sixty-four are on an

antipsychotics and " many soldiers take more than one type of

medication. "

Of course, depression itself is a risk factor for suicide, so it is

not always possible to tell if the disease or the drug is at fault.

But many believe the dramatic and tandem rises in suicide rates and

psychoactive drug rates are correlated. " Intuitively, it just tells

you that there's a connection, "

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. told the National Journal this month.

Troops may also be taking Chantix, an antismoking drug so linked to

violence and self-harm that Secretary of the VA Peake was forced

to defend its use, even in drug trials, before the House Committee on

Veterans' Affairs in 2008. " If you know the drug induces suicidal

thoughts, " an unappeased Committee chair Bob Filner D-Ca. asked Rep.

Filner, " Why don't you just stop? "

Even widely prescribed asthma drugs like Singulair and Advair are

linked to suicide, says the FDA, and have been cited in young people's

deaths.

And who knows what happens when the drugs are mixed with mood

stabilizers, insomnia and pain pills and antianxiety and antipsychotic

pills -- combinations that have never been tested for safety? 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. "

Links between suicide and even murder-suicide and SSRI and SNRI

antidepressants have been long recognized. Of course, not everyone on

SSRIs will be a suicide risk; but the danger is serious enough that

the automatic and “knee-jerk” military prescribing of the drugs should

be investigated.

Traci , a healthy 19-year-old with no mental problems, hanged

herself during Lilly trials of Cymbalta in the drugmaker's own clinic

in 2004.  Red Lake shooter Jeff Weise, who killed 10 on a Minnesota

Indian reservation in 2005, had just upped his Prozac. And the

Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was also on psychoactive

medications, according to news reports.

Americans have doubled their antidepressants since 1999 so that 10

percent of the population, or 27 million, now take them. Suicides have

climbed by 5 percent since 1999 and 16 percent in middle-aged adults.

(The suicide rate actually doubled in Japan since SSRIs were

introduced.)

In fact, the high percentage of civilian suicides on psychoactive

drugs is probably the clearest indication that military life is not

the only cause of the shocking troop suicides: In September alone,

there were 18 civilian suicides, 11 murders, two murder suicides and

other violence linked to people who were using or had used

antidepressants, according to published reports.

A 54-year-old respiratory patient with a breathing tube and an oxygen

tank and no previous criminal record held up a bank in Mobile. She had

gone off her antidepressants.

An enraged man in Australia, also off his antidepressants, chased his

mailman and threatened to cut his throat...for bringing him junk mail.

And a 58-year-old Amarillo man with no criminal history tried to

abduct three people, killing an Oklahoma grandmother in the process.

He had " an antidepressant in his blood, " said police.

Also in the 30-day period, a 60-year-old grandmother in Seattle killed

three family members and herself; a disc jockey in Bristol, UK set

himself on fire; and an Exeter, UK man was determined to have stabbed

himself in the heart. All were on antidepressants.

Finally, in the month of September, legal proceedings began against

two mothers and a father charged with killing their own children.

Over 4,000 published reports of violent and bizarre behavior of people

affected by antidepressants on the web archive ssristories.com reveal

the same out-of-character violence and self harm in civilians that is

currently seen in the military.

Twenty people set themselves on fire. Ten bit their victims (including

a biter who was sleepwalking and a woman, on Prozac, who bit her

87-year-old mother into critical condition). Three men in their 70s

and 80s attacked their wives with hammers. Many stab their victims

obsessively — one even stabbed furniture after killing his wife — and

14 parents drowned their children, a crime seldom heard of before the

2001 Yates case. (Yates drowned her five children while she was

taking the antidepressant Effexor, which manufacturer Wyeth (now

Pfizer) " issued no public warning " about, says the Associated Press.)

Then there's the North Carolina pilot on Zoloft who sang, " I'm going

down for the last time, " into the cockpit voice recorder before he

crashed his plane in June. And the mayor of Coppell, Texas, Jayne

s, who killed herself and her daughter in July over the grief of

losing her husband. Police found antidepressants at the home.

Why don't doctors and media outlets publicize the names of these volatile drugs?

It's a good question, said Kohls, a Minnesota family

practitioner, in an oped written after Iraq veteran Magdzas

killed his pregnant wife, their 13-month-old daughter, their dogs and

himself in Wisconsin in August.

" Nobody in the media has, to my knowledge, had the courage to report

what the drugs were, nor have they interviewed the physician or his

clinic to find out the rationale for prescribing drugs that have

common violence-inducing effects (with black box warnings stating that

in the prescribing information), " he writes. " Therefore nothing has

been learned from this important teachable moment, probably because

revealing the common reality of prescription drug-induced violence

would be economically harmful for the sacred cows of Big Pharma and

Big Medicine. "

Healy, a psychiatrist and professor at Cardiff University School

of Medicine in Wales, has authored several books about the

connections. " Prozac and other SSRIs can lead to suicide, " he said in

a lecture at the University of Toronto. " These drugs may have been

responsible for one death for every day that Prozac has been on the

market in North America. "

And psychiatrist and expert witness Dr. Breggin specifically

called on the military to “curtail the use of these drugs and rely

instead on psychotherapeutic and educational processes that have

already proved effective,” in a recent oped. “There is “profound

danger of prescribing drugs that cause impulsivity, hostility and

suicidality to heavily armed young men and women under stress on

active military duty. " He also called for “additional research in the

military and the VA concerning suicide and violence caused by

antidepressants.”

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. has also zeroed in on medicated troops in Senate

hearings this year, calling the fact that one of every six troops are

on psychoactive drugs " pretty astounding and also very troubling. "

And Retired Col. Bart Billings, a former Army psychologist who has

also testified before Congress, said, " I feel flat out that

psychiatrists are directly responsible for deaths in our military, for

some of these suicides, " in a March Marine Timesarticle. " I think it's

criminal, what they are doing. "

Still, the remarks of Bagosy, the wife of Marine Sgt. Tom Bagosy

who took his own life in May after being prescribed the medication

Neurontin, might be the most persuasive of all.

In an article called " A Prescription For Tragedy " in the current

National Journal, she says that her husband told her before his death

that " 'It all started to get worse when I got on this medication.’

Looking back, that was the beginning of the end.”

http://www.alternet.org/story/148444/are_we_giving_our_soldiers_drugs_that_may_m\

ake_them_kill_themselves?page=entire

[Martha Rosenberg frequently writes about the impact of the

pharmaceutical, food and gun industries on public health. Her work has

appeared in the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune

and other outlets.]