Combat Stress Driving Up Army Crime, Drug Abuse, Suicides

Anti-anxiety medications given to over 100,000 soldiers? Most of these drugs, if not all of them, require a doctor checking on them but that's not all not being done. These drugs won't help if the lives are not changed at the same time. Putting them back into combat after trauma has already begun to eat them away only prolongs the agony instead of helping them heal. Most of these medications also come with warnings about staying away from things that can make their condition worse while telling them side effects can make even driving dangerous to them. They are given these medications and then armed to face combat but even using machinery can be dangerous? Therapy is needed more than drugs to help them heal otherwise the symptoms are only being masked.

Substance abuse is common with PTSD, much like medications, they mask the symptoms of PTSD and calm them down for a while. Too many soldiers don't want to be given drugs that make them zombies. Some would rather be thought of as being a druggie or alcoholic instead of being a "mental case" because that attitude still lives on in military culture.

The other factor in this report is that with 2 million having been deployed into combat, the increase in PTSD yet the rates for crimes are very low, which says a lot about their character.

What exactly is the military still thinking when it comes to giving them medication even civilians have to be careful about taking? Are they trying to just get them to show up for duty and function no matter what harm is being done to them without therapy? Do they think about the side affects of the drugs they are handing out? Do they think about short term memory loss and the fact that some soldiers can't remember if they took their pills or not?

They can heal and recover but medication alone won't get them there from here.

Combat Stress Driving Up Army Crime, Drug Abuse, Suicides

Today, more than 100,000 soldiers are on prescribed anti-anxiety medication, and 40,000 are thought by the Army to be using drugs illicitly. Misdemeanor offenses are rising by 5,000 cases a year.

With the pressing need for manpower, the Army has retained more than 25,000 soldiers who would otherwise have been discharged for misbehavior, including 1,000 soldiers with two or more felony convictions.

DAVID WOOD
Chief Military Correspondent

The U.S. Army, under the accumulating stress of nine years at war, is suffering an alarming spurt of drug abuse, crime and suicide that is going unchecked, according to an internal study that depicts an Army in crisis.

A small but growing number of soldiers who perform credibly in combat turn to high-risk behavior, including drug abuse, drunken driving, motorcycle street-racing, petty crime and domestic violence, once they return home.

As a result, more soldiers are dying by drug overdose, accident, murder and suicide than in combat. Suicide is now the third-leading cause of death for soldiers.

"Simply stated, we are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy,'' concludes the extraordinary internal Army investigation commissioned by Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff.

The study also found that across the Army, leaders have lost visibility and accountability over their soldiers, in many cases unaware that soldiers under their command had abused drugs, committed crimes or even previously tried to commit suicide. Drug testing is done only sporadically, the study found, and there are no central repositories for criminal data.
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Combat Stress Driving Up Army Crime Drug Abuse Suicides