Suicide story of Sgt. Justin Junkin has all the reasons

If you want to know why there are so many suicides, you need to read this. It has it all. Sgt. Justin Junkin had survivors guilt, suffered from the lingering stigma of PTSD even though he was helping other soldiers, plus medication issues with Zoloft and Klonopin. He knew the basics of PTSD and so did his wife. Justin ended his pain not by healing, not by getting what he needed to fight this destroyer inside of him. He ended his pain by ending his own life. All of us need to pay attention to this whole story.

Soldier took up family life, but with subtle signs of trouble
Sgt. Junkin seemed to be 'grieving well' after his best friend's death
Oct 7, 2012
Written by
Philip Grey
Leaf-Chronicle

Justin had two soldiers working for him at the time, including one who had severe post-traumatic stress problems and suicidal thoughts. Justin shielded the soldier from ridicule, which Heather said was prevalent in the unit for soldiers who were open about their psychological issues.

In the Army’s official report on Justin’s death, a sworn statement from a soldier in Justin’s battery reads, “Unit has a stigma about soldiers getting help, making soldiers not wanting to get help. (Redacted) felt he had to be close to suicide to get help.”

“Justin actually spoke out against suicide at one of their meetings when they were touching on that subject and PTSD,” Heather remembered. “That was maybe less than a month before he died.”

CLARKSVILLE, TENN. — After the death of his best friend from an improvised explosive device during a 2010 deployment to Afghanistan, Sgt. Justin Junkin had been placed on suicide watch. However, by the time he came back to Fort Campbell just over nine months later, he appeared to be doing fine and seemed more focused on the future than the past.

His friend’s death had hit him hard, and for a reason that went beyond the understandable grief over losing someone he had been close to since before their previous deployment together in Iraq.

The friend, who had taken over Justin’s team after Justin was pulled out over problems with his hearing, was killed in action just two missions later.
read more here
also
Soldier's path to suicide

This is why it all keeps happening to too many families across this country as we read the numbers released by the DOD and the VA. Average one a day military suicides information is usually followed by a subcategory of attempted suicides. These releases always have claims by the Marines and the Army they are doing this and that to prevent them. This information is always more of the same thing they have been doing only they do more of it. In other words, they do more of the same things that failed all of these years.

Links to medications suspected with non-combat deaths

Medicating the military

This is from my old blog going back to 2007. I doubt the links still work but they give you an idea how long these medications have been studied but they are still being used on the troops no matter what the side effects are.

FDA Approves Zoloft For Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

NEW YORK -- December 8, 1999 -- Pfizer Inc. has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its anti-depressant, Zoloft® (sertraline hydrochloride), for treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor discovered and developed by Pfizer, Zoloft is the first medicine to receive a FDA approval for the treatment of PTSD. Symptoms of PTSD may develop following any extreme traumatic event in which there was threatened death or serious injury, and the individual’s response involved intense fear, helplessness or horror. Such events may include physical and sexual abuse and natural disasters.

Approximately 50 percent of the general population are exposed to a traumatic event during their lifetime. Ten to twenty percent of those develop PTSD. The prevalence of PTSD is twice as high in women as in men. go here for the rest http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/14ef56.htm

Study leads first drug for post-traumatic disorder
By LYNNE LANGLEY Of The Post and Courier staff


Thanks to a study led in Charleston, the first medicine anywhere to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, a common and potentially devastating illness, has won approval. Zoloft, a drug widely used to combat depression, proved significantly more effective than an inactive placebo in decreasing symptoms and raising quality of life, explained Charleston psychiatrist Dr. Kathleen Brady."This is one of the more common psychiatric disorders, and now there is a medicine that treats it. It not only improves symptoms, it improves lives," said Brady, professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina Institute of Psychiatry. "This should be a positive message to patients: We've got a drug that is safe, that millions of people have used with success." Brady, the lead author of a study published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, explained that the study is one of two that led to federal Food and Drug Administration approval of Zoloft four months ago as the first treatment in the world for post-traumatic stress disorder. "That makes it a pretty big finding," she said. The disorder affects about 8 percent of Americans at some point in their lives, said Brady, adding it's nearly as widepread as depression.

Of 187 patients in the study, 53 percent of those receiving Zoloft (the brand name of the generic sertraline) were much or very much improved at the end of 12 weeks, Brady said, and some patients showed benefits within two weeks.
go here for the rest of this http://research.musc.edu/news/brady.html

Suicides and Homicides in Patients Taking Paxil, Prozac, and Zoloft: Why They Keep Happening -- And Why They Will Continue. Underlying Causes That Continue to Be Ignored by Mainstream Medicine and the Media. From almost the day that they were introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, sudden, unexpected suicides and homicides have been reported in patients taking serotonin-enhancing antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. I'm not surprised this problem hasn't disappeared, nor will it unless we look deeper. I never hesitate to say that these drugs -- selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) -- help millions of people. But any drug that can cause positive changes in people's brains can also cause negative ones unless care is taken to avoid it. We do not take such care. So it was no surprise to me when, in August 2003, more headlines appeared. These were based on reports by British authorities and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about unpublished studies showing an increased risk of suicide in children and teenagers taking Paxil (1-3). Prior reports of suicidal and homicidal acts in adults taking SSRIs have been explained away by drug industry defenders and mainstream doctors, who claim that suicide is common in depression anyway. And that no type of antidepressant helps everyone. Some depressed patients don't get better and choose suicide. That's true sometimes, unfortunately. But these reports describe more impulsive, violent acts than expected. As I said fifteen years ago at the time of the first reports and again in Over Dose in 2001 (4), SSRIs could create a unique combination of side effects that might severely impair judgment and impulse control. This has been described by others as well (5-16).

go here for the rest of this
http://www.medicationsense.com/articles/oct_dec_03/suicides_homicides.html

Friday, May 25, 2007


Convenient Honesty and Zoloft

Recently, a study was published which cast doubt on the efficacy of sertraline (Zoloft) for PTSD, finding that the drug was no better than a placebo.

The kicker is that the patent has expired for Zoloft, which is why the data are now flowing more freely. I’ll make the case here that data were buried until they would no longer hurt sales to any meaningful extent, at which point data were published, at least partially as a public relations move to show just how “honest” the companies are with sharing both positive and negative results with the psychiatric community.

The Research: The latest study, which appears in the May 2007 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, showed no benefit for drug over a 12-week period. Placebo tended to outperform Zoloft on the majority of outcome measures, though the differences were of a small and statistically insignificant degree. Patients were significantly more likely to drop out of treatment on Zoloft. It was unclear if there were any serious adverse events (e.g., suicide attempts, notable aggression, etc.) because the article did not mention them at all. Patients started this study between May 1994 and September 1996. The original draft of the study was received by the journal in March 2006. Nearly 10 years passed between study completion and writing up the data for publication

go here for the rest of this
http://clinpsyc.blogspot.com/2007/05/convenient-honesty-and-zoloft.html

Pfc. Robert A. Guy 26 Company I, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force Willards, Maryland Died due to a non-hostile incident near Karma, Iraq, on April 21, 2005 "Any little thing they do is a help," said Ann Guy of Willards, Md., whose son, Marine Pfc. Robert A. Guy, killed himself in Iraq on April 21, 2005 - a month after he was prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft with no monitoring.
http://www.optruth.org/index.php/images/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=2232&Itemid=116

Robert Guy's story is just one of many. The above studies showed very a limited number of people were in the trial. With 187 in the trial 53% found it of help in twelve weeks. Why so few in a drug that has been given to so many people? Who managed to sell Zolofot to the American people?

We can go back on the net and find report after report on drugs the FDA approved yet produced very bad results from heart problems and other illnesses. If you go back into my blog, type in non-combat deaths in the search field, you will find many other reports of adverse effects from people taking these "wonder drugs" and ended up committing suicide or murders.

The next question is: Why isn't the media tracking these before we lose more people who were supposed to be being helped? Do you own homework and if you are on Zolofot, Google it and find the reports you need to know. If you are counting on the media to tell you on the nightly news, forget about it.

This is just the first Google page when I searched for Zolofot and a gun.

S.C. v. Pittman - Full Trial Coverage on Courttv.com Jurors began deliberations Monday in the murder trial of Christopher Pittman, who claims Zoloft made him gun down his grandparents when he was 12 years old. ...
www.courttv.com/trials/pittman/index.html http://www.courttv.com/trials/pittman/index.html

Can Valium Kill :: US Licensed Pharmacies
Picot a mischief for manners secondly hearthrugs which to expect anthea quite of objects the valium and zoloft interactions hand-gun and valia velyova and ...
adminstaff.vassar.edu/mebrown/FDR/db/?Can-valium-kill/ http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/mebrown/FDR/db/?Can-valium-kill/

Phentermine And Zoloft :: US Licensed Pharmacies
Phentermine and zoloft, Phentermine overnight delivery no prescription, ... Swallowing the yellow-lace courtyards paved hand-gun and earnestness that ties ...
adminstaff.vassar.edu/mebrown/FDR/db/?Phentermine-and-zoloft/ http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/mebrown/FDR/db/?Phentermine-and-zoloft/

Federal Judge Rejects Pfizer's Efforts to Dismiss Zoloft-Suicide .....
Pfizer argued that, since the FDA approved Zoloft and did not, ... The gun represents a drug and the bullets represent a serious safety problem. ...
www.baumhedlundlaw.com/media/zoloft/Woody/WitczakPreemptionWin.htm http://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/media/zoloft/Woody/WitczakPreemptionWin.htm

Phentermine Zoloft :: Safe, Secure Online Shopping
Phentermine zoloft, Lysergic acid diethylamide aciphex phentermine pharmacy, ... Otters skins and gun was what thats fort but imogen whispered anthea nudged ...
rescom.uwec.edu/dmdocuments/db/?Phentermine-zoloft/ http://rescom.uwec.edu/dmdocuments/db/?Phentermine-zoloft/

The Reason Behind The Madness - Drugs such as Prozac, Zoloft ...
These and virtually all of the gun-related massacres that have made headlines over the ... THEY WERE PERPETRATED BY PEOPLE TAKING PROZAC, ZOLOFT, LUVOX, ...
www.karinya.com/madness.htm http://www.karinya.com/madness.htm

Military Families Speak Out : Mentally Unfit, Forced To Fight ...
"I couldn't believe it - an antidepressant, while he's out there holding a gun? I told him, `Get off the Zoloft because I hear bad things about it.'" ...
www.mfso.org/article.php?id=604 http://www.mfso.org/article.php?id=604

Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporter...
Gun Show On The Net » 2nd Amendment Show » SEMPER FIrearms ... SSRI drugs like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and Luvox--which was apparently prescribed for Eric ...
keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=1433 http://keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=1433

VIRGINIA TECH MASSACRE
Ted Kennedy, Rosie O'Nut and Diane Fienstien all promote gun control yet ... A wrongful death court case was filed and settled by the Zoloft manufacturer. ...
forums.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=24&forumPage=39 http://forums.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=24&forumPage=39

Teen Guilty of Murder in 'Zoloft Case'
Teen Guilty of Murder in Zoloft Case, Crime / Punishment, A Charleston, ... Stories of Eastern StateQuiz - Vermont Gun LawsQuiz - Mississippi Gun Laws ...
crime.about.com/b/a/146813.htm

So while the DOD says they have their act together and doing everything possible to address military suicides plus take care of the troops and their families, now maybe you know why stories like Sgt. Justin Junkin keep ending so sadly. They can hold all the Stand Downs for suicide prevention they want, do all the training they want, hold meetings with families even more, but in the end if they are repeating the same messages, we will keep seeing them suffer and families will still have to visit a grave while they blame themselves.