Our troops going into battle on Anti Depressants?

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/3681/1/193/

According to Barbara Boxer on Olberman. We are putting our men and women through the shredder physically and emotionally.

Has this ever been done before in military history? I know they have been giving them stimulants and speed for decades, but anti depressants?
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Matthew Kaufman, a co-author of the Courant series, told a radio station that as part of the investigation he helped conduct, he talked with families and friends of veterans and found troubling results. A number of cases of service members committing suicide while in theater, i.e. areas occupied by US forces preparing for or engaged in war or occupation activities, showed symptoms prior to their deaths, but didn't get medical help.

Some personnel who reported mental distress to military medical services often received inadequate care and were returned to duty quickly. Kaufman described the plight of some personnel who, after reporting mental distress, were pulled from duty, given 72 hours of rest and recreation, supplied with anti-depressant medications (such as Zoloft or Prozac), and were returned to their original duty stations.

This procedure goes against standard medical opinion regarding the use of anti-depressants. When anti-depressants are prescribed, doctors usually recommend extended observation of a patient for signs of increased depression that can occur when starting on anti-depressant medication. Kaufman’s articles cited cases where service members returned to duty under these conditions committed suicide.

Kaufman argued

Antidepressants can be extremely valuable when used properly. They provide a foundation for recovery when theres a significant depression present, maybe 30% of what's needed. The rest is hard work in therapy and other pro therapeutic activity. The war is no place for that type of medication.

Now here's the down side. About 2% of the population is bipolar and another 1.0-1.5% struggles with psychosis. The antidepressants used kick in underlying psychosis and mania. Expect to see more incidents where people just freak out. In some cases, you can count on it being the anti depressants starting up a manic or psychotic episode.

How utterly dreadful.

K&R

Would you rather they not be on the meds? I'd rather they not be in battle of course

I have read this somewhere else where there is widespread use of anti depressants being used, I just can't remember where I read it. But it is happening.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20060319-9999-1n19mental.html

The redeployments are legal, and the service members are often eager to go. But veterans groups, lawmakers and mental-health professionals fear that the practice lacks adequate civilian oversight. They also worry that such redeployments are becoming more frequent as multiple combat tours become the norm and traumatized service members are retained out of loyalty or wartime pressures to maintain troop numbers.

and here's the really nasty part

Robinson said three Army doctors have told him about being pressured by their commanders not to identify mental conditions that would prevent personnel from being deployed.

“They are being told to diagnose combat-stress reaction instead of PTSD,” he said. “That does two things: It keeps the troops deployable and it makes it hard for them to collect disability claims once they get out of the military.”

Robinson contends that the Pentagon is trying to control its spending on mental-health disabilities.

actually gets out and gets to come home...don't expect any help or benefits...not even your anti-depressants will be paid for...Your on your own... Bush's wars for profit - Just kill innocent people for the republican corporations. The babies & children are just ragheads and peasants like yourself.

We are just workers and peasants to them, our lives are cheap and people just don't want to accept the fact they want us to be good christian soldiers who march off to war and die, no questions asked, because we will die for our great leader Bush and go to heaven to be with Jesus!

of people on prozac who lose it and commit crimes - some violent - in just everyday society. Imagine what they could do to people in a meat grinder getting shot at and blown up on a daily basis and decked out in 40 pounds of combat gear in 120 degree weather. Unimaginable. They are also given "stay awake" pills that "allow" them to stay alert for up to 40 straight hours on duty. This has to have negative effects. They also suffer from "drug resistant viruses" over there that haven't been seen since Vietnam, which they try to take a number of different drugs for but to no avail, and God only knows what the effects of those are. The whole thing is just tragic. Way to go bush. Way to go rummy. Way to go cheney. Fuckers.

Making them fight for days in the heat with no sleep and sending them back out to be targets and then trying to calm them down with drugs, as if it would help.