We were deeply affected by that. On Christmas Day, as mentioned, she was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder at a health care facility. She was allowed to leave for a trip home, and on the way she intentionally drove her car into an oncoming transport truck on the Trans-Canada Highway near Calgary. She wrote a note for the family stating that her death was a “final desperate act” as a result of “protracted battles” with Veterans Affairs over medical benefits for dental work she received in the late 1980s while stationed in Germany during the Gulf War.
We attribute two things to Corporal MacEachern's suicide death, one being the Veteran Affairs culture of delay and denial; the other, the experimental use of psychiatric drugs. Corporal MacEachern's husband stated that she had just had a change of medication. Our concerns led us to post a warning and videos on our CAV national veterans services page on the CAV national website about the dangers of psychiatric drugs. Brain chemistry is a medical field that medical science has the least knowledge of. Drug companies are producing psychiatric drugs and they are being prescribed on a trial basis to see if they work. In some cases, other drugs are prescribed to counter the side effects of the primary drug.