This week's JAMA Psychiatry report is reminiscent of the Army's 2010 "Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention" report which blames the economy, stress and troops' risk-taking personalities including drug and alcohol use for the suicides. ("Illicit" drugs are cited 150 times.) Both this week's report and the Army report seem like institutional exercises in passing the buck onto victims and their "pre-existing" problems.
They also insult the intelligence. Since more than a third of troops who kill themselves never deployed, the majority of those who did never saw combat and suicides are not falling since the wars' ends, shouldn't the role of widely-prescribed drugs that carry suicide warnings at least merit a mention as a factor or variable?
In a series called "Medicating the Military," Military Times reports that one in six service members was on a psychoactive drug in 2010 and shows graphs of the suicide and prescription drug increases that exactly match.
When it comes to Big Pharma and the military, there appear to be no firewalls. Matthew Friedman, executive director of the VA's National Center for PTSD, unabashedly admits receiving AstraZeneca money in a video and served as a Pï zer Visiting Professor while helming a government organization. AstraZeneca makes Seroquel on which the VA spent $125.4 million in 2009 alone.
Elspeth Ritchie appeared in a webcast funded by AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly while serving in the U.S. Army Surgeon General's Office and praised the drugs made by the companies.
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