Fort Hood Shooting: Investigating Psychiatric Drugs & Violence Connection is Long Overdue

Thirty-seven percent of recent war veterans are being diagnosed with PTSD and 80 percent are of those are prescribed a psychiatric drug. The Veterans Administration's mental health budget has soared from less than $3 billion in 2007 to nearly $7 billion in 2014. From 2005 to 2011, the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration increased their prescriptions of psychiatric drugs by nearly seven times. That's more than thirty times faster than the civilian rate. Violence and psychiatric drugs is a deadly formula America is becoming too intimately familiar with. Rather than continually send heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims, it is time for lawmakers to investigate the connection between prescription psychiatric drugs and violence.