For Some Troops, Powerful Drug Cocktails Have Deadly Results

[pinboy3niner]

For Some Troops, Powerful Drug Cocktails Have Deadly Results
By JAMES DAO, BENEDICT CAREY and DAN FROSCH
Published: February 12, 2011


<snip>
After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs — and the results have sometimes been deadly.

By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.

But those medications, along with narcotic painkillers, are being increasingly linked to a rising tide of other problems, among them drug dependency, suicide and fatal accidents — sometimes from the interaction of the drugs themselves. An Army report on suicide released last year documented the problem, saying one-third of the force was on at least one prescription medication.

“Prescription drug use is on the rise,” the report said, noting that medications were involved in one-third of the record 162 suicides by active-duty soldiers in 2009. An additional 101 soldiers died accidentally from the toxic mixing of prescription drugs from 2006 to 2009.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/us/13drugs.html

This story also was posted in GD by ensho:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x407679

:patriot:

(Ed. to add *snip*)

[KurtNYC]

1. one third on meds -- one third of suicides involve meds

therefore no causation (?)

[PavePusher]

2. My meds are for allergies, high cholesterol and a blood clot I got last summer.

I doubt that a full third of the military is on drugs for mental issues.

Very misleading statement there.

[pinboy3niner]

3. That doesn't prove anything

I think this story illustrates several different issues, though there may be some overlap.

The alarming numbers of suicides have been recognized for some time. But to identify some that "involve meds" isn't really helpful by itself. As Pave Pusher points out, there's a big difference between a soldier on an antibiotic, or a pain med, and one on multiple antidepressants/antipsychotics (possibly with other anti-anxiety and pain meds involved).

The newer issue is the incidence of soldiers on multi-med cocktails of mental health and other drugs dying suddenly in their sleep. These accidental deaths raise serious questions about the role of drug interactions that need to be investigated immediately, especially when military doctors are continuing to prescribe an assortment of meds, all at once, for some troops.

Other issues identified in the story include military docs being unaware of meds patients are getting off the books from private providers (because of the stigma of PTSD), and the sharing of meds by patients in the Wounded Warrior units.

It's going to take a lot more focused investigations before we can begin to to say anything meaningful about causality.