Some troops headed back to Iraq are mentally ill

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20060319-9999-1n19mental.html

Besides bringing antibiotics and painkillers, military personnel nationwide are heading back to Iraq with a cache of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications.

The psychotropic drugs are a bow to a little-discussed truth fraught with implications: Mentally ill service mem-bers are being returned to combat.

The redeployments are legal, and the service members are often eager to go. But veterans groups, lawmakers and mental-health professionals fear that the practice lacks adequate civilian oversight. They also worry that such redeployments are becoming more frequent as multiple combat tours become the norm and traumatized service members are retained out of loyalty or wartime pressures to maintain troop numbers.

Sen. Barbara Boxer hopes to address the controversy through the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health, which is expected to start work next month. The California Democrat wrote the legislation that created the panel. She wants the task force to examine deployment policies and the quality and availability of mental-health care for the military.

[MADem]

1. The harbinger at the end of the piece is damning

Friedman said that with time, “one of the things we are going to find out is how well people function who might have been on medication (during combat). This is a very important question and has all kinds of implications.

“But remember, they are all volunteers. This isn't Vietnam, where people were drafted and sent to fight. Think of the ethical questions that would arise from sending draftees back to war on medications.”

[Jackpine Radical]

6. In Vietnam we had a great "cure" for "combat fatigue."

"Combat fatigue." Great euphemism for what amounted to a totally debilitating breakdown of psychological functioning. We didn't even recognize traumatic stress reactions unless they were extreme--and there were definitely some extreme ones.

I remember evacuating a guy during a mortar attack. He was screaming and flailing around and we ended up strapping him between two stretchers in order to subdue him.

I remember others who couldn't even stand up but were reduced to whimpering mounds of human jelly lying on the floor of the psych tent.

Anyway, the standard treatment for cases like this was to shoot them up with massive amounts of chlorpromazine (Thorazine), which would put them into a coma-like sleep for about 24 hours. When they came out of it, they were generally sufficiently coherent to be returned to the field, and that's what happened.

And by the way, in the 1st Cav, most of the helo pilots were loaded on librium.

[GCP]

2. It happened to the grand-son of a friend of mine

The poor kid's a Marine, 19 years old, had been in Iraq twice already, was there during the original invasion, and then was sent back a year later, when he was wounded in the eye and leg. By September last year he was based in California and suffering from PTSD. When he heard his unit was being sent back yet again, he became suicidal. He was actually in the base ER waiting treatment, when MPs marched in and put him on the plane. He's been on Wellbutrin and was on kitchen duty over there - they wouldn't allow him a gun - the last time I heard.
His Senator and congressman were on the case, but they couldn't do anything for him.

[Kindigger]

3. Painkillers

Sh*t! I can't even drive a semi on painkillers, but I could have a gun? Oooookay

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

4. K&R... The ramifications of this are terrifying.

Those poor kids.

Bring them home!

[Renegade Six]

5. It gets better!

When they are finally done with you they say you have a "personality disorder" which by definintion is pre-exsisting (before you ever enlisted)and send you on your way with little to no VA benifits. It cuts down on those lazy ex-soldiers VA handouts. After 6+ "normal" years of outstanding service in the army, all of a sudden you've had it all along. Who knew? The thing you learn after weeks in the psyche ward.