“Most psychiatric drugs can cause withdrawal reactions, sometimes including life-threatening emotional and physical withdrawal problems… Withdrawal from psychiatric drugs should be done carefully under experienced clinical supervision.” Dr. Peter Breggin
President Obama awarded Sgt. Meyer The Medal of Honor in recognition of his acts of extraordinary valor on Sept. 8, 2009, which saved the lives of 13 US Marines and Soldiers and 23 Afghans. Over the course of a six-hour firefight, without regard for his own personal safety, Sgt. Meyer repeatedly braved enemy fire in eastern Afghanistan attempting to find and save fellow members of his embedded training team. read the rest here
"This isn't about me. If anything comes out of this for me, it's for those guys."
via: NIMH For the second time in less than a year, the National Institute of Mental Health and its researchers have been honored by the White House. On August 25th, NIMH and eight suicide prevention organizations were named recipients of the administration’s Champions of Change initiative. here is what I thought of this God Bless AmericaThis announcement bothered me on so many levels. I wondered, how much is this collaboration costing? So I found out.
via NIMH: NIMH and the U.S. Army have entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to conduct research that will help the Army reduce the rate of suicides. NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Army Secretary Pete Geren, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. signed the MOA on October 23, 2008.
The MOA allows for a $50-million, multi-year study on suicide and suicidal behavior among soldiers, across all phases of Army service. It will be the largest single study on the subject of suicide that NIMH has ever undertaken.
The joint project will strengthen the Army’s efforts to reduce suicide among its soldiers by identifying risk and protective factors for suicidal thinking and behavior. It will help the Army develop more effective intervention programs and target them where they are most needed.
Benefits of the study will go beyond the Army. The study’s findings will also inform our understanding of suicide in the U.S. population overall, and may lead to more effective interventions for both soldiers and civilians. Every year, an average of 30,000 Americans die by suicide.
ArmyStudy To Assess Risk and Resilience in Service members
Army STARRS is the largest study of mental health risk and resilience ever conducted among military personnel.
Beginning in 2011, Army STARRS investigators will look for factors that help protect a Soldier’s mental health and those factors that put a Soldier’s mental health at risk. Army STARRS is a five-year study that will run through 2014; however, research findings will be reported as they become available so that they may be applied to ongoing health promotion, risk reduction, and suicide prevention efforts. Because promoting mental health and reducing suicide risk are important for all Americans; the findings from Army STARRS will benefit not only servicemembers but the nation as a whole.
Army STARRS Preliminary Data Reveal Some Potential Predictive Factors for Suicide
Early examination of data from the U.S. Army’s Total Army Injury and Health Outcomes Database (TAIHOD) has revealed potential predictors of risk for suicide among soldiers. Preliminary results were provided by researchers leading the ongoing Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS). Army STARRS, a partnership between NIMH and the U.S. Army, is the largest study of mental health risk and resilience ever conducted among military personnel.
The TAIHOD database includes information from Regular Army soldiers (not Guard or Reserve Component soldiers) and covers the period between 2004 and 2008. Army STARRS researchers compared data on all suicides, accidental deaths, and combat deaths in an effort to identify patterns and predictors among the three types of deaths.
The following findings are preliminary. They involve relatively few descriptive predictors and do not account for complex events or interactions. Researchers plan to do additional work with a much larger historical dataset and with survey data from the All Army Study and the New Soldier Study (two Army STARRS components) to test these initial findings.
The main preliminary findings include the following: read here.
What is missing?
Any mention of the psychotropic drugs used to "treat" symptoms of PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc. as being a factor deserving consideration. I find it strange that on the Army STARRS website there is no mention of prescription drugs AT ALL-- that I could find. I would imagine that the TAIHOD database should also be collecting the information about psychotropic drug treatment that the troops are receiving; what drugs and combinations of drugs are prescribed, to those who have attempted or committed suicide/homicide; as well as information about illicit drug and alcohol use. It is more than strange, (to say the least) that these relevant factors are apparently not being investigated.
Now this is a study that is attempting to determine what factors make an individual resilient; factors such as ethnicity, gender, deployment history are being examined. The psychotropic drugs prescribed to our troops is a factor, although it is apparently not one being considered. Psychotropic drugs are still being used as "first line treatment" for symptoms of PTSD, in spite of the fact that this "Standard Practice" in known to be ineffective and costly: it is fiscally, socially and medically unsound; yet it is still Standard Practice.
This Champions of Change award is given shortly before the half way point of a six year joint collaboration. In the three years since the Army approached the NIMH, the suicide rate has doubled among Military personel. We still are losing high numbers of sons and daughters, who have served Our Country to suicide---strangely, the ineffective and unsafe teratogenic drugs prescribed to troops that are known to cause suicide, are not a factor being investigated.
The fact that psychotropic drugs known to cause suicide are not a factor considered relevant to this joint endeavor, means that the NIMH deserves special recognition:
“I am extremely pleased by the news that the President has announced that he will award the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Dakota Meyer.
Sergeant Meyer embodies all that is good about our nation's Corps of Marines. He is a living example of the brave young men and women whose service, fidelity and sacrifice make us so proud.
Sergeant Meyer's heroic actions on September 8, 2009 in the Ganjgal village in Afghanistan serve as an inspiration to all Marines and will forever be etched in our Corps' rich legacy of courage and valor.
Speaking on the behalf of all Marines, I congratulate Sergeant Meyer on this auspicious news and look forward to his award ceremony here in Washington, DC in mid-September.”
— General James F. Amos, 35th Commandant of the Marine Corps
This isn't about me. If anything comes out of this for me, it's for those guys." Sgt. Dakota Meyer
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