From the Change Direction website: "America is at a crossroads when it comes to how our society addresses mental health. We know that one in five of our citizens has a diagnosable mental health condition, and that more Americans are expected to die this year by suicide than in car accidents.

While many of us are comfortable acknowledging publicly our physical suffering, for which we almost always seek help, many more of us privately experience mental suffering, for which we almost never reach out.

From the National Health Institutes of Mental Health website: In the last decade, the United States has experienced a series of man-made and natural disasters. Large numbers of people in this country have been exposed to potentially traumatic events. This video focuses on NIMH research in the areas of traumatic stress reactions and specifically mental health issues among U.S. service members. What we learn from the military experience can help us understand stress risk predictions for the entire population.

From the article: "Benzodiazepines were introduced in the 1960’s
to replace barbiturates, which were effective as sedatives but were dangerous in overdosage and often abused. The stress-reducing and sedating properties of benzodiazepines made them seemingly an ideal drug to manage anxiety and insomnia symptoms and they became useful in addressing other clinical states such as epilepsy, spasmodic disorders, alcohol withdrawal, and anesthesia. Benzodiazepines rapidly became the most widely used of all psychotropic drugs; during the last
25 years it has been estimated that over 500 million people have taken a course of benzodiazepine treatment. Historically benzodiazepines were the primary posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment agent and their anxiety-reducing properties
made them seem to be a model medication for the management of symptoms related to PTSD. Soon after the development of benzodiazepines, however, reports began to appear about potential withdrawal symptoms and risks of tolerance and dependence, which contributed to the continued controversy surrounding their use (for a historical review,
see Lader, 2011)."