Army Suicide Rate Increases

This article points out that an enormous amount of soldiers (a confirmed 108) have committed suicide in 2007. Ten times as many have attempted or thought about suicide. This has ranked suicide as the fourth leading cause of death in the army, exceeded only by hostile fire, accidents and illness.

Somehow, the additional 180 hired psychiatrists and psychologists along with added mental health screening has not handled the problem. It's only getting worse. It makes me wonder if the amount of army suicides are going up in relation to the amount of soldiers on psychiatric drugs. If soldiers are on SSRIs or other drugs that include suicide as a side effect, the psychiatrists hired could be part of the problem - not the solution.

I'd love my readers to keep their eyes and ears open for more data about this truly tragic epidemic that is happening in our military.

Reporting Side Effects Directly to the FDA

There is a 1800# and website to report adverse side effects of drugs to the FDA directly. The FDA currently is offering this information on print ads, but not on tv ads. This articles tells that the Consumers Union is now appealing to the FDA to get this information out in TV ads, along with the print ad campaign. They have compelling statistics - among those who take prescription drugs, one in six experienced a serious side effect. Only thirty-five percent of these people knew that you could report the side effect to the FDA directly. Eighty-one percent had seen or heard a drug ad in the last month, but ninety-one percent had seen this ad on tv. So, by putting this number on television ads, it would reach the majority demographic of prescription drug users.

The 1800# is: 1-800-FDA-1088 and the website to report side effects direct to the FDA is www.fda.gov/medwatch.

FDA Outlook - Bleak or Rosy?

The FDA announced they will be hiring over a thousand new employees over the next year. However, this article accuses them of just playing catch up. Others look at the new hiring as an interesting move by the FDA and are hopeful that all these new employees will help in food and drug oversight, as well as make FDA service faster.

What do you think? With all these new employees, will the FDA change their ways and become an efficient group instead of a glorified DMV for food and drugs?

Next Two Weeks

Hi! I'm off on vacation for the next two weeks, so please expect my next post to be on May 18th, 2008. Thanks for following my blog!