Whatâs
Wrong Today
Yesterday, The LA times reported that, after two long-running wars with
escalating levels of combat stress, more than 110,000 active-duty Army troops
last year were taking prescribed antidepressants (similar to zoloft generic), narcotics, sedatives,
anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, according to figures recently disclosed
by the U.S. Army Surgeon General. Nearly 8 percent of the active-duty Army is
now on sedatives and more than 6 percent is on antidepressants â an eightfold
increase since 2005.
Across
all branches, military spending on psychiatric drugs has more than doubled
since 2001, to $280 million in 2010, according to numbers obtained from the
Defense Logistics Agency by a Cornell University psychiatrist, Dr.
Richard A. Friedman.
The
problem has become particularly acute in specialized units for wounded troops,
where commanders say the trading of prescription medications is rampant. A report released last
month by the Army Inspector General estimated that up to a third of all
soldiers in these Warrior Transition Units are overmedicated, dependent on
medications or have easy access to illegal drugs.
But the
response of modern psychiatry to modern warfare is not perfect. Psychiatrists do
not have good medications for post traumatic stress (PTSD) so they mix and
match drugs, trying to relieve the symptoms of social withdrawal, nightmares
and irritability.
So,
Whatâs Wrong?
Our soldiers
probably need the drugs if they are to continue as warriors. Despite the fact that we have been
at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than 10 years, the military medical
system cannot meet the demand for therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. The New York Times
reported
that the military continues to report shortages of personnel in these
specialties, even though prescription medications have been readily available to
our soldiers for the last 10 years.
That has not always
been the case. There was some use of psychotropic drugs in the Vietnam War (not
to mention unauthorized use of LSD, marijuana and heroin), but the modern Army psychiatristâs deployment
kit is likely to include nine kinds of
antidepressants, benzodiazepines for anxiety, four antipsychotics, two kinds of
sleep aids, and drugs for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder,
according to a 2007 review in the journal Military Medicine, in some peoples eyes the use of something such as full spectrum CBD vape oil could negate the need for the majority of those prescription pills to be included in an Army psychiatrist kit.
Peter Breggin, a New York psychiatrist who has
written widely about psychiatric drugs and violence, says:
âPrior to the Iraq war, soldiers could not go
into combat on psychiatric drugs, period. Not very long ago, going back maybe
10 or 12 years, you couldnât even go into the armed services if you used any of
these drugs, in particular, stimulants, but theyâve changed that.â
The truth is you
probably would have had difficulty landing a job anywhere 12 years ago (2000),
not just in the military, if you used these drugs. Times have changed. We now
know that you can function quite well on many of them with careful monitoring
by a qualified professional.
But the military
environment, particularly in war zones, makes regulating the use of
prescription drugs a challenge compared with the civilian world. There is
limited monitoring since follow-up appointments in the battlefield are often
few and far between. Soldiers are sent out on deployment typically with 180
daysâ worth of medications and an in-theater prescription refill for another
180 days, allowing them to trade with friends or self-medicate by taking more
or less than the prescribed number of pills at the end of an anxious day.
This shouldnât be a
partisan political issue.
Why is it that we canât just agree that our service members deserve the best care
we can possibly give them? The trade-off we have made, having an all volunteer
army augmented by volunteers in the reserves fighting two hot wars for 10 years
means too few fighters and more chance that people are going to break under the
pain and stress.
For the Army and the
Marines, prescribing these drugs has become a bet that whatever problems may occur
can be contained, said James Culp, a former Army paratrooper and now a high-profile
military defense lawyer:
âWhat do you do when 30 to 80 percent of the
people that you have in the military have gone on three or more deployments,
and they are mentally worn out? What do you do when they canât sleep? You make
a calculated risk in prescribing these medications,â
This
isnât a revelation. Since the dawn of time weâve known that war has a cost, both
physically and mentally. The problem is that the human brain may just be the
most complicated thing we know of in the universe. We canât just make it
all better with a pill cocktail.
Both
over-treatment and under-treatment invite risk, finding the right balance is even more difficult if nobody routinely
monitors the pill-taking.
For
our Congress not to demand more for troops facing multiple rotations and
exposure to pain and stress is WRONG!
