"The rate at which they are drugging soldiers in battle is amazing," says Baughman in a phone interview. "When they come home, the drugs may be continued. There's a lot of coercion in the VA to keep them on their drugs as well. Keeping them medicated isn't treatment, and it's dangerous."
Author, psychiatrist, and Huffington Post blogger Peter Breggin agrees, noting that the military's rising suicide rate seems to correspond with a record use of antidepressants—such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil—in the military. "First, there is no evidence that antidepressants prevent suicide and a great deal of evidence that they cause it," he blogs. "Second, antidepressants almost never cure depression and instead they frequently worsen depression."
Joseph Laney
Russell complained of being treated dismissively by Army psychiatric staff.
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In addition to the psychological ramifications, Baughman suspects some psychoactive drugs are killing soldiers whose deaths are misclassified as suicide. He cites an unscientific study by himself and the parents of some dead soldiers, reviewing a list of 100 active troops and veterans whose deaths were listed as suicides but, in his view, may have been the result of "an epidemic" of cardiac arrests. They include 16 unexplained deaths over the past two years at Fort Hood. More data is needed to reach firm conclusions, he concedes, but "unless there is full acknowledgement of all of these deaths for what they are, they cannot know the number of actual suicides."
Pentagon spokesperson Hall says he's not aware of any such epidemic. A civilian employee whose son is in the military, Hall says he'd want to know the facts, not only from a personal standpoint but as a citizen. But he insists the Army is sincere when it says it wants to get to the bottom of every death, be it mass murder or suspicious suicide.
"There's no grumbling, no complaining about this. We eagerly investigate every death with the intention of determining the truthful cause," he says. "If we make mistakes, we try to learn from them."
Wilburn Russell, 73, Sgt. Russell's father, lives in the Dallas suburb of Sherman, about three hours north of Fort Hood. He recently disconnected his phone, but earlier told his hometown newspaper, the Herald Democrat, that the younger Russell had e-mailed his wife about five days before the shootings and told her: "I have been threatened by two officers."
The dispute with higher-ups was gnawing at his son, Russell felt. "I guess John couldn't handle it and he decided this is worth dying for," he told the Herald Democrat. 'They are killing me so I'm going to kill them,' you can quote me on that. He didn't have the maturity to be able to talk these problems out and go and ask for help."
But based on the Army's report, that's incorrect: Russell asked for help, and got it. Unfortunately, he and the system broke down at the same critical moment. In the Army report, officials concluded that "Under the circumstances, the proper response was for the MPs to warn the [clinic] and to dispatch an MP patrol unit" to the facility. "At minimum, calling the [clinic] would have taken very little time and resources and would have helped guard against a potentially catastrophic event."
They also found that while "Buddy Watch" and "Unit Watch" are common terms and practices, there are no written guidelines for undertaking such monitoring. Furthermore, investigators suggested it might be a good idea to put a lock on the clinic door.
The Army says it's fixing all that, just as it also must fix things at Fort Hood. But Cilla McCain doubts there will be full disclosure and resolution.
"I'm not holding my breath," she says. "If history's our guide, I guarantee the true picture behind the shootings will not surface."
randerson@seattleweekly.com
