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

[unhappycamper]

Are We Giving Our Soldiers Drugs That May Make Them Kill Themselves?
AlterNet / By Martha Rosenberg

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 the Fayetteville Observer. Six-hundred-sixty-four are on an antipsychotics and "many soldiers take more than one type of medication."

[KharmaTrain]

1. The Military Still Is Ill-Prepared To Deal With PTSD

You'd think with the milleniums of wars that have been fought that man would recognize the trauma that affects someone who either kills another person or witnesses such attrocities. For the most part it was ignored as the "fog of war" and "shell shock" that was supposed to be temporary or that "real men" brush such things off. The real long-term affects of PTSD have only come to light as the aftermath of Vietnam and subsequent military adventurism. Still, this illness that is a manifestation of the madness of war is an inexact science as the military comes to grip with the reprocussions of teaching someone to become a killing machine and then to return them to the "real world".

Unfortunately the longest of the boooosh legacies will be those who carry the mental scars of his wars for profit for decades to come. Many of these people had to endure several tours that have compounded their trauma and the long term effects are just starting to come to light. With a poor economy and a nation that wants to forget yet another ugly war, their futures will be difficult. The bottom line is war is depressing...it's the ultimate insanity and those who have gotten too close are fated to suffer from it.

[Panaconda]

2. K&R n/t

[w8liftinglady]

3. well,shit....look at Lariam,the drug I'm researching right now...

read the side effects...well known side effects-for over a decade........
no wonder the current SSRIs are ineffective.larium was used in Iraq through 2004,and Afghanistan through 2009.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/27/60II/main538144.shtml
(from 2003)

“We had no way to know that this drug would be so powerful that it could alter his personality so much and damage him so much that he would, in fact, do that in some type of delusion or hallucination. That's what we didn't know,” says Linda Perry.

But Roche did know something about Lariam and suicide. Over the past year, two UPI reporters, Dan Olmsted and Mark Benjamin, unearthed internal documents. They show that by the time Chuck Perry killed himself, the company knew of at least seven suicides, and 13 suicide attempts, by people living outside the United States - all associated with Lariam. But nowhere in its product information was there any mention of the word suicide.


http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/0802/29.php
from 2002

United Press International (UPI) reporters, Mark Benjamin and Dan Olmsted, have conducted a 6 month investigation of the reports linking the antimalaria drug, Lariam to severe mental disorders--including violence and suicide. http://www.upi.com/results.cfm?Keywords=lariam

On May 21, UPI reported that "in thousands of pages of internal documents spanning a decade, Hoffmann-La Roche tracked increasing reports of suicides, suicidal behavior and other mental problems among Lariam users. A review of four years of reports filed to the FDA found 11 suicides attributed to Lariam, and one expert on drug side effects said he believes the number easily could be 100 times higher." Furthermore, *"A statistical analysis of FDA data, commissioned by UPI, indicates that Lariam users are five times more likely to report having mental problems that could lead to suicide than those taking a different drug -- the antibiotic doxycycline -- also used to prevent malaria." http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20052002-054200-9601r


http://marenostrum.org/buceo/medicina/malaria/indexi.htm
from 1995
"Case reports have documented possible Lariam-associated neuropsychiatric reactions, and such reports have lead to a hesitancy among military in the USA to use weekly Lariam as the preferred prophylaxis," added J. L. Sanchez in the prestigious journal,The Lancet.

Lariam's effects include "acute brain syndrome," consisting of disorientation and mental dysfunction, and "psychiatric symptoms", such as acute psychosis, memory loss, confusion, hallucinations and behavioral abnormalities -- aggression, agitation, and hyperactivity. Although most of these psychiatric symptoms generally do not last more than 10 days after terminating use of Lariam, severe depression can persist up to nine months. "There is no explanation for these reactions," noted Hennequine.

http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-10761.html
from 2003
Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants the U.S. military to reassess its use of the anti malaria drug Lariam, prescribed to some troops in Iraq, because of what she calls "growing evidence about Lariam's dangerous side effects" and complaints by troops that it has damaged their health.

"Given the mounting concerns about Lariam as expressed by civilians, service members and medical experts about its known serious side effects, I strongly urge you to reassess the (Department of Defense) policy on the use of Lariam," the California Democrat wrote Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a letter dated Oct. 29.

In the short term, Feinstein said, the military should "immediately provide service members with information about Lariam's potential side effects," more closely monitor troops for problems and offer easy access to alternatives.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the letter. In the past, military medical officials have said that the drug has proven its worth and hasn't caused serious problems. "Our point of view is Lariam is a very useful medication in preventing a dangerous disease, and our experiences with it have been good," Virginia Stephanakis, a spokeswoman for the Army surgeon general's office, told United Press International earlier this year.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6947472/
from 2005
Pogany is among the current or former troops sent to Iraq who claim that Lariam, the commercial name for the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, provoked disturbing and dangerous behavior. The families of some troops blame the drug for the suicides of their loved ones. Though the evidence is largely anecdotal, their stories have raised alarm in Congress, and the Pentagon has stopped giving out a pill it probably never needed to give to tens of thousands of troops in Iraq in the first place.

[Karenina]

4. My recently deceased sister was head of the ER at a VA hospital.

I debriefed her on our weekly calls and did research for her. When Lariam came up, her reaction was OH SNAP! She was UNABLE to get access to who had been given what or very much else. The military has often been used for pharmaceutical and other "experiments."
Lariam, Corexit, whatever... :shrug:

[maryf]

5. Oh please make this an OP, too many won't catch it...

Great stuff here...

[lightningandsnow]

6. Lithium and zoloft stopped me from killing myself.

I have bipolar disorder.

These drugs need to be prescribed carefully, but they can really help some people.

[maryf]

7. It's the "carefully" that's important...

too many doctor's prescribe drugs at the second a patient says they are a little depressed...and too many gp's prescribe without the appropriate background...