25 Sobering Facts! Soldiers+ Psych Meds + Suicides

The CF Suicide rate is also very high, hard to get a number on it as DND wont release it easily and even when they do it is missing names. I stopped counting from my tour which was 6 years after and number was 13 for 7,500 deployed.

What the statistics above dont show or explain is that as you go back in years to battles the troops had less time deployed in face of enemy. Of those deployed in face of enemy they had a higher casualty rate. thus less combat soldiers survived.

Some basic numbers that are not exact but close to stats are:
Average amount of time a soldier was in battle face of enemy:
WW1 17 days about
WW2 Western 12 days
WW2 South Pacific 40 days
Vietnam 240 days
modern battles months depending on mission and type.

Add to those longer numbers you have a higher survival rate so more soldiers who have seen battle for longer periods who survived.

1) 33% of the U.S. Army is on prescription medications, and nearly a quarter of those are on psychotropic drugs

2) In 2010, the Pentagon spent $280 million on psychiatric drugs. That number has since risen.

3) There are now over 8,000 suicides each year by U.S. soldiers and veterans; that's over 22 a day

4) 33% of those suicides are attributed to medication side effects

5) That means medications are killing more U.S. soldiers and veterans than Al-Qaeda

6) 500% more soldiers abuse prescription drugs than illegal street drugs

7) Under the Obama administration, the number of veterans waiting for VA care has risen from 11,000 in 2009 to 245,000 today

8 ) More active duty soldiers die from suicide than from combat: 349 dead last year

9) The number of prescriptions for Ritalin and Adderall written for active-duty soldiers has increased 1,000% in the last five years

10) For every active-duty service member who dies in battle, 25 veterans die by suicide

11) Only 1 percent of Americans have served in the Middle East, but veterans of combat there make up 20% of all suicides in the United States

12) The suicide rate of active-duty soldiers in the Civil War was only 9 - 15 per 100,000 soldiers. The suicide rate of active-duty U.S. soldiers in the Middle East is 23 per 100,000. And casualty rates were far higher in the Civil War, meaning the Civil War was more psychologically traumatic.

13) In the Korean War, the suicide rate among active-duty military soldiers was only 11 per 100,000

14) To date, the Pentagon has spent more than a billion dollars on psychiatric drugs, making it one of the largest customers of Big Pharma

15) In 2010, over 213,000 active-duty military personnel were taking medications considered "high risk" by the Pentagon

16) In the years since the Iraq War began, twice as many soldiers of the Texas Army National Guard have died of suicide than in combat

17) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls military suicides an "epidemic"

18) Of all the branches of the military, the Army has the highest number of suicides each year, almost 400% more than the Marines

19) Most active-duty soldiers who take psychiatric medications consume a combination of three to five prescriptions

20) The use of prescription medications by active-duty soldiers is largely unregulated. Soldiers are given a bottle of meds and sent into combat. If they run out of meds, they are given a refill, no questions asked.

21) The mainstream media says the answer to lowing suicides of veterans is to take away their guns so that they cannot shoot themselves. This is the logical equivalent to trying to fix your car's engine by removing the "check engine" light.

22) The Pentagon is initiating new research (in 2013) to try to figure out why psychiatric medications cause soldiers to commit suicide. The research involves tracking brain activity by attaching electrodes to the skull.

23) One-third of military suicides are committed by soldiers who have never seen combat

24) In the last year, the military wrote over 54,000 prescriptions for Seroquel to soldiers, and all those prescriptions were "off label," meaning the intended use has never been approved by the FDA as safe or effective.

25) Dr. Bart Billings, a retired Army Colonel and former military psychologist, refers to psychiatric drugs as a "chemical lobotomy" for soldiers.

Sources for this article (in order of appearance)

http://www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-Epidemic-Psychiatric-Drugging-...

http://www.toxicpsychiatry.com/storage/Military%20why%20are%20we%20dr...

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/11/ap-military-suicides-out-of-con...

http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/in-this-issue-the-militarys-billi...

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2013/03/ap-report-says-suicide-danger-t...

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/02/17148761-why-modern-soldie...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57563857/u.s-military-suicides-ex...

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2004/01/29/Army-wo...

http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/s...

http://www.prweb.com/releases/psychiatricdrugssuicide/10/prweb1000132...

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