Mentally Ill service members are redeploying to Iraq with antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications

"... psychotropic drugs are a bow to a little-discussed truth fraught with implications: Mentally ill service members are being returned to combat." And they are returning to Iraq with anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications.

"The redeployments are legal, and the service members are often eager to go. But veterans groups, lawmakers and mental-health professionals fear that the practice lacks adequate civilian oversight. They also worry that such redeployments are becoming more frequent as multiple combat tours become the norm and traumatized service members are retained out of loyalty or wartime pressures to maintain troop numbers."

"A 2004 Army report found that up to 17 percent of combat-seasoned infantrymen experienced major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder after one combat tour to Iraq. Less than 40 percent of them had sought mental-health care."

"A Pentagon survey ... found that 35 percent of the troops returning from Iraq had received psychological counseling during their first year home."

According to "... statistics collected by the San Diego Veterans Affairs Healthcare System ... about 33 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from schizophrenia, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder."

Multiple combat tours usually increase the risk of suffering mental illness.