The military environment makes regulating the use of prescription drugs a challenge compared with the civilian world, some psychologists say.
Soldiers are sent out on deployment typically with 180 days’ worth of medications, allowing them to trade with friends or grab an entire fistful of pills at the end of an anxious day.
“The big difference is these are people who have access to loaded weapons, or have responsibility for protecting other individuals who are in harm’s way,” said Grace Jackson, a former Navy staff psychiatrist who resigned her commission in 2002, in part out of concerns that military psychiatrists even then were handing out too many pills.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-army-medication-20120408,0,1291311.story
Source: Los Angeles Times – April 7, 2012
