On or off the battlefield, the strained and war-weary men and women who have either served, or are serving in the military today are often faced with emotional scars. This has been a familiar problem throughout the centuries, where soldiers have suffered from such afflictions as anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, stress and depression. But today, more than ever, these normal responses to the physical and emotional hardships of war are labeled as a “mental disorder" called “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD).
Not long ago, war trauma was treated with compassion, understanding and love. But today, the willingness to empathize with the warrior and listen to his experiences has been replaced by a psychiatric pop-a-pill “quick-fix” mentality that employs antidepressants, antipsychotics, stimulants, sedatives or anti-anxiety drugs.
These chemical compounds, however, can produce harmful consequences, and accumulating evidence shows that the ever-increasing use of psychiatric drugs may be fueling an epidemic of military suicides and unexplained deaths.
From 2001 to 2009, the Army’s suicide rate increased more than 150% while orders for psychiatric drugs rose 76% over the same period. These soaring statistics cannot be attributed to the horrors of war, as 85% of military suicide victims had never even seen combat. This suggests that the PTSD diagnosis is being widely handed out to active-duty and vets to justify putting more and more of them on cocktails of prescribed mind-altering drugs from which they may never recover.
The documentary, The Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda, was produced as a public service for active-duty soldiers, veterans and their families. It provides viewers with information that the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry will not divulge. It is being published here not only for our soldiers but also to governments and military officials trying to come to grips with how billions of dollars in mental health funding has so greatly failed our troops.