Huffington Post did the right thing on murder-suicides report

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 13, 2014

Huffington Post did the right thing and pulled the reprehensible report on murder-suicides. They not only pulled it, they apologized.

Update from Huffington Post

Editor's Note A previously published article featuring a graphic that depicted data on violent crimes by veterans has been removed. The article was intended to call attention to the lack of evidence correlating post-traumatic stress disorder to violent behavior among veterans, and to highlight the insufficient mental health services available to them. It failed in these regards, and we regret that the data as presented in our graphic was incomplete and misleading.

PTSD is not the enemy no matter what reporters say but it seems as if too many others are simply stuck on stupid.

Huffington Post has done more to educate the public on the tribulations of our veterans than any other site. Time after time, especially during Suicide Prevention Month last year when they dedicated huge sections to the troops and veterans telling their stories and asking questions. Given the fact they screwed up on this one they turned around, admitted it and apologized, which far too many other news sites fail to do.

Take a good long look at the graphic supplied on the claim that murder-suicides are an issue.

It seems that the article on the Huffington Post ended up giving other reporters what they were searching for. Another headline to use to get attention while bringing the wrong attention to something that is not, repeat not, worthy of the veterans with PTSD. This was repeated on many sites last week and now it appears on PolicyMic but no one seems to actually look at the chart itself. They are actually lower than 2002.

I did a huge report in 2007 on military suicides and there was a rise in murder-suicides but most of them were tied to Lariam and other anti-malarial drugs.

The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs will study the side effects of Lariam, a drug given to servicemen to prevent malaria, Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said. The use of Lariam came up in investigations of murders and murder-suicides involving Fort Bragg soldiers in the summer of 2002, when four soldiers were accused of killing their wives. Two of those soldiers committed suicide immediately and a third killed himself in jail.

The three soldiers who killed themselves had served in Afghanistan, where Lariam is routinely used by U.S. troops. The fourth, who is still awaiting trial, did not serve there.

There was and still is a huge problem with Zoloft. In 1999 the FDA gave Pfizer approval for PTSD treatment. Many thought it was what veterans had waited for.

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.

But that good PR didn't last long,

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."

It seems that after the soldiers were murdered at Fort Hood, the press wanted to drag up everything possible to get their names in the spotlight.

How about the chart that shows suicides going up instead?

Marines
Navy, Marines suicides fell in 2013; attempted suicides by Marines jumped

TIME reported on the rise in military suicides as well up to 2012 in The Third Surge, Battleland by Mark Thompson.

But why pay attention to the real problem? Why pay attention to the fact that suicides and attempted suicides went up after the military started the bullshit of addressing deaths caused by war but not during it? Why bother to pay attention to the fact that while the number of enlisted military folks went down the suicide rate did not really go down? After all less to count means the number of suicides would have naturally gone down. They also didn't seem to concerned with the fact that attempted suicides went up.

Guess it is just easier to make soldiers look bad instead of the actually seeing what is right in front of their face. Considering how hard they are pushing this claim right now, it makes them all look really stupid while the site where it originated looks redeemed.