mental illness drug humor

This situation just keeps getting worse. Our military is eating itself alive.

Mentally Unfit, Forced To Fight

The Courant’s investigation found that at least 11 service members who committed suicide in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite exhibiting signs of significant psychological distress. In at least seven of the cases, superiors were aware of the problems, military investigative records and interviews with families indicate.

What you have is a military stretched so thin, they’ve resorted to keeping psychologically unfit soldiers at the front,” said Stephen Robinson, the former longtime director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. “It’s a policy that can do an awful lot of damage over time.”

Military investigative reports and interviews with family members indicate that some service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants, including a class of drugs known as SSRIs.

In one case, a 26-year-old Marine who was having trouble sleeping was put on a strong dose of Zoloft, an SSRI that carries a warning urging doctors to closely monitor new patients for suicidal urges. Last April, within two months of starting the drug, the Marine killed himself in Iraq.

So when will they re-institute the draft?



  1. Harold Melton says:

    This is nothing new and particular to Iraq. In the late seventies, we had two suicides within two years at my base in Germany alone. Both had warned they would do this, were treated and continued on duty.

  2. Angel H. Wong says:

    Well, if the guy in charge is crazy, why not his army?

  3. Mike Voice says:

    Its not the suicide, and “continuing on duty” – in the 70’s, on a base in Germany – its the continuing on duty while medicated in a war zone.

    In the 80’s, while I was stationed At Bangor submarine base [Washington state] three guys committed suicide in the barracks over the Christmas holidays – two sailors, and one Marine.

    Caused quite a dust-up that two of them shot themselves in the barracks – since firearms are not permitted…

    Depression from being alone & away from friends/family during holidays is a well-known cause of military suicides over the Holidays.

    Drugging front-line troops in combat areas doesn’t sound safe – for the soldier being drugged, or the soldiers depending on a clear-thinking partner – at their side, or watching their back.

  4. malren says:

    This is a dirty little open secret that has been around for almost a century and a half now in the American military. It’s the new lefty meme this week, though…I suppose the theory is throw enough crap at the wall and something will smell fresh, right?

  5. Mr. H. Fusion says:

    Drugging front-line troops in combat areas doesn’t sound safe – for the soldier being drugged, or the soldiers depending on a clear-thinking partner – at their side, or watching their back.

    Pilots are given amphetamines to keep them awake during those long flights. Can you picture a $1 Billion plus airplane entrusted to a sleep deprived, drugged up pilot? In Afghanistan one pilot dropped a bomb on some allied soldiers, killing four and severely wounding several. Standing orders were willfully disobeyed. During the Court-Martial, the pilot raised the drugs as a defense but that didn’t help him.

    We know about that one, what other snafus have happened while under drugged?

  6. malren says:

    Smartalix, you have a distinct ability to completely twist words and create straw men against which you enjoy arguing.

    It’s NOT A LEFT WING PLOT. Trying to make it seem like a Bush-created and enforced policy, however…that’s a lefty meme that, like so many others, is disproved by anyone with any sense of history or knowledge of the military in this country in the last hundred years.

    This is part and parcel of military culture. Just because *you* only heard about it this week doesn’t make it news.

    I’d like to point out, nowhere do I DEFEND the practice.

  7. ECA says:

    Umm,
    can this be RE-written….
    How can you commit suicide, and NOT BE DEAD???
    Attempted, maybe…

  8. Mike Voice says:

    Darn, the bold tags were only supposed to bracket “while medicated” – not three-quarters of my post. 🙁

    Sorry, for my incompetence at tag-checking.

  9. brad says:

    How is it shocking that out of 134,813,023 people, 11 comitted suicide? It is unfortunate, and it is a sad thing .. but it is hardly a problem.

    In fact, if you do a little research, you will find that the suicide rate in the miltary is actually lower now than it was in the 1990s.

  10. John Wofford says:

    1. In ‘Nam we had grass, liquior and sex with the natives. I don’t think they have that outlet in the Gulf.
    2. The picture, before being “massaged” was probably taken somewhere in north Jersey, somewhere around the GWB. Drugs and the Jersey Turnpike logo; so apropo.


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