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Collateral Damage
During the same time frame, from 2001 to 2009, the Army's suicide rate increased more than 150%, from 9 per 100,000 soldiers to 23 per 100,000, and the Marine suicide rate increased about 50%, from 16.7 per 100,000 in 2001, to 24 per 100,000 marines in 2009.
In a June 20, 2009, commentary for Huffington Post titled, "Antidepressants Cause Suicide and Violence in Soldiers," Dr Peter Breggin, author of "Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Violence, Suicide, and Murder," dismisses the theory that the increased use of prescription of drugs in the military is a response to increased depression among the soldiers.
"In reality," he says, "the use of psychiatric drugs escalates when, and only when, drug companies and their minions target new markets."
"In this case, the armed services have been pushing drugs as a cheap alternative to taking genuine care of the young men and women in our military," he states. "Instead of shortening tours of duty, instead of temporarily removing stressed-out soldiers from combat zones, and instead of providing counseling the new army policy is to drug the troops."
"During Vietnam, a mere 1% our troops were taking prescribed psychiatric drugs," he reports. "By contrast, in the past year one-third of marines in combat zones were taking psychiatric drugs."
In Medication Madness, Breggin evaluated more than fifty cases of suicide, violence, mania and crime induced by psychiatric medications, especially the new antidepressants.
Atypical antipsychotics produce a potentially disastrous "metabolic syndrome" that includes elevated blood sugar, elevated cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, and severe obesity, according to Breggin in a 2009 Psychiatric Drug Facts Newsletter.
"They can also cause direct harm to the function of the heart," he says. "Overall, it's a prescription for cardiac disease and premature death."
As far as claiming the increase in suicides is due to increased horrors in the current wars, California neurologist, Dr Fred Baughman points out: "Who can claim that one war is any more horrible, evil or effecting than another?"
"What jumps out as different about these wars," he says, "are veterans and soldiers saturated with psychiatric drugs, and kept on the front lines or sent back to the front lines time after time."
"These frequent, sudden deaths occurring in the military are due to its policy of reckless, anti-scientific, psychiatric drugging," he warns.
Veterans Dying
"Official figures regarding military "suicides" also have to be taken with a grain of salt," Baughman says.
In 2008, after reading an article in the Charleston Gazette, titled "Vets Taking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Drugs Die in Sleep," Baughman began to investigate veterans dying in their sleep because the deaths did not make sense. "Young men in their twenties do not suddenly die for no reason," he points out.
He specifically investigated the deaths of four West Virginia veterans who died unexpectedly in their sleep in 2008, including Andrew White, Eric Layne, Nicholas Endicott and Derek Johnson. At the time, Stan White, Andrew's father, knew of eight such cases in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia.
