Drug Abuse and the Military

Did you know that the people that are bravely serving our country are being prescribed Zoloft, Prozac, and other antidepressants. With more and more of our soldiers having to stay overseas for more tours and longer tours, the military is turning to these drugs to help with sleepless nights, post traumatic stress, and with depression.
The number of the tours and the length of the tours that our men and women take have an adverse affect on them. With the United States fighting two wars at the same time doctors have to find a way to help the people in need without sending them home. This of course saves the Army a lot of money because it costs more to recruit and train more troops than to keep them pilled up and overseas to keep fighting.

A study that the Pentagon shows that 70% of soldiers will recover after war for a normal life, 20% will suffer some in their life after war, and 10% will have serious problems after coming home from war. Thats a lot of people considering the length of the war and the fact that it is not just one but two wars. The Pentagon has also reconsidered the possibility of rewarding soldiers the Purple Heart for mental problems after war. These numbers are even worse for the National Guard or the Reserves that have normal lives and are taken out of them to fight. The mental stress that these people go through now has a lot of them taking prescription drugs while on duty and on tours.

The long term effects of mental stress on our soldiers are unclear. Last year alone 115 soldiers killed themselves and the majority of them were on some kind of prescription drug. These numbers are clearly alarming and not a good thing. Our men and women are going to have a lot of different issues when coming back to civilian life. Prescription drugs and therapy are the two main things that the Army has to battle the problems that are appearing with the long drawn out war that we are fighting. Unfortunately some people will never recover. Its hard to not remember some of the things that these men and women have seen or experienced.
Sooner or later the war has to be over and there are going to be a lot of soldiers coming home and having to reorganize their lives. I just hope that we have better medicine and more/ better ways to help them. May they all stay safe.