One–in–six service members on a psychiatric medication seems substantive, especially if my understanding that the use of mental health-related meds effectively bars someone from joining up is correct. Some of the prescribing of psychiatric meds may of course itself be spurious or at best an adjunct which was not available in the past. But it’s hard for me to believe that the increased use of body armor hasn’t lead to an increase in orthopedic conditions, though of course there’s the challenge of parsing that out from cases like that of the mountain biker.

And is some of the increase relative to previous conflicts perhaps related to the rise in the use of civilian contractors? I ask assuming 1) that combat arms MOSes end up with as well as claiming a higher rate of service-related problems and 2) that the work done by the non-combat arms MOSes is that which has been most contracted out for.