By Katie Drummond | Wired.com | Sep. 7, 2010

An untold number of active-duty troops and recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home with  mental health conditions inflicted during service — and their spouses and children are suffering too. Now, with solid data slowly emerging from the nearly decade-long wars, the severity of the crisis is starting to show.

The use of psychiatric medications among 18 to 34-year-olds (both troops and their spouses) soared by 42 percent between 2005 and 2009, Army Times is reporting.

Antidepressants were the most commonly prescribed medication, but the use of anti-psychotic meds — like Seroquel, which is used off-label to treat nightmares and insomnia caused by PTSD — nearly doubled. And the use of anti-anxiety drugs, like Xanax, surged by 72 percent.

The numbers are startling, but it’s hardly surprising that prescription drugs have become the Pentagon’s solution of choice, when they’re essentially the only option. With both wars lagging on for years, and troops being redeployed despite psychiatric problems, the military’s fast-tracked efforts at more effective alternatives can’t keep up.

To the Pentagon’s credit, though, their ongoing attempts at minimizing stigma associated with mental ailments, like PTSD and depression, might actually be working: more troops on drugs means more were willing to seek help in the first place.

But this kind of increased drug use raises questions about side effects.  Seroquel, for one, is now implicated in a handful of military deaths. Family of deceased personnel, along with small recent studies, allege the drug causes heart failure, while Pentagon brass are blaming rare interactions in the drug cocktails prescribed to ailing vets.

Neither option seems particularly heartening, but the drug’s popularity persists: spending on Seroquel by Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense has increased by more than 700 percent since 2001.

Many of the drugs prescribed by military doctors, like Paxil and Zoloft, are also accompanied by warnings about an increased risk of suicide. The danger has already caught the military’s eye, with Army Gen. Peter Ciarelli noting in a recent report that the Army ought to “conduct research to identify appropriate antidepressant medications that are beneficial to the treatment of depression and anxiety, but that will not increase risk for suicidal behavior.”

And, as Army Times notes, accidental deaths due to multi-drug use are on the rise — 68 among troops in 2009, compared to 24 in 2001.

Unfortunately for the troops and their families, though, the military’s fast-tracked efforts at addressing mental health — from pill-popping prevention to brain scan diagnosis — have yet to yield major treatment breakthroughs. And troops shouldn’t rely on the Pentagon’s medical experts to keep tabs on their safety: a recent report by the Senate Armed Services Committee warned that the military “has no visibility of pharmacy data for prescriptions dispensed in forward operating areas.”