Is Overprescription Fueling Veteran Suicides? | Derek Blumke

American Thought Leaders

The Epoch Times

Government, News, Politics

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Veterans are not being told the risk of their medications,“ says Derek Blumke. “Doctors themselves are not aware of the risks of those medications.”

Derek Blumke served 12 years in the US Air Force and Michigan Air National Guard and is a longtime advocate for veterans. A bad experience with psychiatric drugs changed his life trajectory. He has been sounding the alarm about suicide and the overprescription of psychiatric drugs among veterans.

“If we’re going to treat a firearm with respect that we should and we do, which is making sure there’s a safety on, making sure the weapon is not always loaded, don’t point at people, this is a similar thing. If one of these medications can cause you to harm yourself or others, you should be told of that. And right now, we’re not,” he says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Veterans are not being told the risk of their medications.
0:03.0	And the reason I believe that they're most commonly not being told is because the doctors themselves are not aware of the risks of those medications.
0:10.0	Derek Blumkey served 12 years in the U.S. Air Force and Michigan Air National Guard,
0:16.0	and is a longtime advocate for veterans.
0:18.0	A bad experience with psychiatric drugs changed his life trajectory.
0:22.6	The more people you put into this machine under our current prescribing and care paradigm,
0:28.6	the more cold bodies you're going to be coming out of the back end.
0:31.6	He has been sounding the alarm about suicide and the over-prescription of psychiatric drugs among veterans.
0:38.3	I think where we're at today is that there is a huge point of hope because we have leaders
0:43.2	in government that care about this problem. This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Yon
0:47.7	Yakke.
0:50.7	Eric Blomke, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Great to be with you, Ian.
0:55.0	Thank you so much for the invitation.
0:57.0	So until last year, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,
1:02.0	colloquially known as the VA, had never mentioned psychiatric drugs in their annual suicide report,
1:10.0	which is something that's mandated,
1:12.2	it's an important report that comes at every year. So, and you highlighted this to me as an
1:17.8	incredibly important point. Why is this so unusual? This is unusual because approximately
1:24.4	70% of all veterans under VA care are prescribed a psychiatric drug.
1:28.4	Almost 30% are on endopressants.
1:31.2	Almost all these drugs have box warnings, a warning of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
1:35.9	And when you have a treatment modality being used for 70% of your population,
	...

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