Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland called Wednesday for a government-funded investigation into possible links between the growing use of anti-depressants by members of the military and high rates of suicide among men and women in uniform.
Sgt. Eric Layne’s death was not pretty. A few months after being prescribed a drug cocktail with the antidepressant Paxil, the mood stabilizer Klonopin and AstraZeneca’s controversial antipsychotic drug Seroquel, the Iraq war veteran was “suffering from incontinence, severe depression [and] continuous headaches,” according to his widow, Janette Layne, at FDA hearings for new Seroquel approvals last year.
At least one in six service members is on some form of psychiatric drug. And many troops are taking more than one kind, mixing several pills in daily “cocktails” — for example, an antidepressant with an antipsychotic to prevent nightmares, plus an anti-epileptic to reduce headaches — despite minimal clinical research testing such combinations.
On February 24, 2010 the Veterans’ Affairs Committee of the U. S. House of Representatives chaired by Bob Filner (D-CA) held hearings on “Exploring the Relationship Between Medication and Veteran Suicide.” Military suicides have risen rapidly in recent years at the same time that the prescription of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs has escalated. The hearing focused on the dangers of the newer antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro, Cymbalta, and Effexor.
Today, the biggest problem we have, and one of the things that shocks so many Americans, is the rise of teen suicides and the rise of school shootings.