Report: Mental health of U.S. soldiers in a freefall

New York Magazine reporter Jennifer Senior has a wrenching report on the growing mental-health crisis among American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

With military suicide rates rising to unprecedented heights—to the point where more soldiers are now dying by their own hand than in combat—Senior finds that many soldiers end up combating their own mental afflictions in isolation. Often, she notes, they end up falling out of social networks of support, dependent on a bevy of prescription anti-depressants and sleep aides to make it through each day.

A spokesman at Fort Drum, home to the 10th Mountain Division here in New York State, tells me by e-mail that one-quarter of its 20,000 soldiers have "received some type of behavioral health evaluation and/or treatment during the past year." Defense Department spending on Ambien, a popular sleep aid, and Seroquel, an antipsychotic, has doubled since 2007, according to the Army Times, while spending on Topamax, an anti-convulsant medication often used for migraines, quadrupled; amphetamine prescriptions have doubled, too, according to the Army's own data. Meanwhile, a study by the Rand Corporation has found that 20 percent of the soldiers who've deployed in this war report symptoms of post-traumatic stress and major depression. The number climbs to almost 30 percent if the soldiers have deployed more than twice.

Senior notes that the Army didn't take the issue seriously in the beginning, even as suicide rates began to soar. Military officials instead wrote off the spreading mental-health epidemic to a generation gap, arguing that the current crop of young soldiers just weren't as psychologically tough as their predessors. But Peter W. Chiarelli, a four-star general and Army vice-chief of staff, began looking into the issue and found that multiple deployments into fierce war zones can break even the most hardened soldier.

"Don't ever underestimate what three, four, five deployments does to you," Chiarelli told Senior. "It's uncharted territory, as far as I'm concerned." He added, "I'll tell you point-blank, though I've avoided this conclusion for two years: Where we're really seeing the increase in suicide is in the population that would never have contemplated suicide—but because of successive deployments, or a single deployment, or an event in a deployment, they go into this danger area."

If you haven't yet seen the heartbreaking story of James Blake Miller—the so-called "Marlboro marine" pictured above—we strongly recommend that you read it here.

(Photo: Luis Sinko/AP/Los Angeles Times)