Fighting military suicides with… smoothies?

~ susie


Henry Rollins talks about military suicides.

Isn’t this a little… sad? I mean, veterans have so much working against them. Hell, counselors aren’t even allowed to ask the veterans they counsel if they have guns (because the NRA doesn’t approve). They have trouble getting jobs, many of them lost their homes while they were in the Middle East, a lot of them have PTSD and the military suicides now outnumber those killed in action.

Maybe keeping people in an insane war has something to do with it, too. Because if you recognize the insanity, and you can’t leave, suicide might seem like a reasonable option.

And smoothies are going to help? Maybe if we stop sending people off for extended tours in insane wars, they wouldn’t have so many problems:

The military might have a new weapon in its battle against suicide: smoothies, spiked with omega-3 fatty acids.


The Associated Press reports the study, being conducted by the Veterans Administration, Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), and the National Institutes of Health, on behalf of the Army, will build on previous research that proved people with low omega-3 levels face more mental disorders.


Nearly 350 servicemembers have already taken their own lives this year, a number the VA says is almost double the civilian population.


Some veterans already receiving mental health care will get smoothies high in omega-3s, while others will receive placebos. If the effect proves to be strong enough, the military may consider giving all soldiers supplements of the fatty acids to ward off depression.

Published by susie

5 thoughts on “Fighting military suicides with… smoothies?”

  1. “The 21st century can and must be an American century.” That was Romney at VMI yesterday. The Vulcans (Zionist neo-cons) wrote that line into Mitt’s speech. These are the same people who gave us the “Project for a New American Century,” ran Bush’s foreign policy, and lied us into to unfunded wars. One in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. The Vulcans (Zionist neo-cons) now control Romney’s foreign policy agenda and want wars in both Syria and Iran. If elected Romney will give the Vulcans (Zionist neo-cons) their wars and we’ll have thousands of new veterans with PTSD. Obama will not go to war in either Syria or Iran.

  2. The omega-3 thing sounds loopy — and it sure as hell does not replace stopping the insane wars that actually cause the suicides (and all the other tragedies) — but there’s actually some fairly good evidence that omega-3s really do have an effect against depression.

    They’re not the only thing like that. Years ago (like, 30?) I remember reading a study about adding significant quantities of brewer’s yeast (i.e. lots of natural B vitamins) to the diets of psychotics in a mental hospital. (Those were the days when they still had mental hospitals.) These were patients who didn’t communicate, hallucinated, threw shit at the walls, had to be kept away from knives. Seriously crazy.

    After a few weeks of added B vitamins, either a quarter or a third of them (don’t remember) became indistinguishable from those of us who pass for normal.

    So some of these food-based effects are astonishingly strong. As to why that study isn’t a household word? The only thing I can think is that you can’t patent B vitamins.

  4. STOP THE FUCKING WARS…………………is the “anything and everything we can do to reduce the violence…among veterans”!!!!

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