Collateral Insanity

While 227 health professionals serve the 40,000 troops at Bales’ military base – Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash. – Afganistan’s 26 million inhabitants have a few dozen trained providers, and they lack medications and adequate facilities. Services in rural areas, where 75 percent of the population lives, “are nonexistent,” WHO reports.
Not surprisingly, many of the country’s mentally ill turn to self-medication, either with over-the-counter balms such as benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium) or with illegal opium and heroin. A 2009 U.N. study found that war trauma is a key factor for the almost 1 million Afghans with drug problems. FROM HERE