Some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries, a new study estimates.

Only about half have sought treatment, said the study released Thursday by the RAND Corporation.

"There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Terri Tanielian, the project's co-leader and a researcher at the nonprofit RAND.

In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, two leading researchers warn that the entry of big companies like Microsoft and Google into the field of personal health records could drastically alter the practice of clinical research and raise new challenges to the privacy of patient records.

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With little fanfare, a small number of prominent academic scientists have made a decision that was until recently all but unheard of. They decided to stop accepting payments from food, drug and medical device companies.

No longer will they be paid for speaking at meetings or for sitting on advisory boards. They may still work with companies. It is important, they say, for knowledgeable scientists to help companies draw up and interpret studies. But the work will be pro bono.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Patrick Kennedy says his personal struggles to recover from depression, alcoholism and substance abuse have made him a more compelling advocate in Congress for improved mental health care coverage.

The Rhode Island Democrat, a son of Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, played a leading role winning House passage last month on a bill to expand coverage for people needing mental health and addiction treatment.

"My own story gave a lot of my colleagues a comfort level to tell me their own stories, privately," he said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. "In the process it tied them into this debate personally in ways I think that gave traction to this legislation early on."

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