• Well-known psychiatrist says “psych meds” cause violence in too many users
By Ralph Lopez
Psychiatrists have come forward to assert that certain psychiatric medications, such as those known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), are almost certainly the chemical cause of a high number of instances of random violence and suicide in which SSRIs have been present.
The research challenges the pharmaceutical industry’s defense that the high correlation between random violence and the presence of these medications is due to the mental illness itself, not the drugs being prescribed for the illness. Other critics of the industry claim that drugs tend to be too aggressively marketed and over-prescribed.
The media has reported that the suspected shooter in the Sandy Hook multiple killings, Adam Lanza, was possibly on some form of psychiatric medication, perhaps related to a reported diagnosis of a form of autism, a developmental disorder that affects social and communication skills. Authorities have yet to make a statement on what, if any, psychiatric medications Lanza was on or had been on in the past. The SSRI with the brand name Prozac is sometimes prescribed for autism.
Answering the pharmaceutical industry’s defense, in testimony before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in February 2010, Dr. Peter Breggin, founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, told the committee that the causative links between violent incidents and the drugs in question had already been established by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“The pharmaceutical industry has attempted to discredit case reports as evidence for causation,” Breggin told the committee. “However, case reports have led to most FDA changes in labels and to most withdrawals of psychiatric drugs from the market, and are a mainstay in the FDA for evaluating adverse drug reactions.
“There is overwhelming evidence that the SSRIs and other stimulating antidepressants cause suicidality and aggression in children and adults of all ages,” he added.
Breggin made the news in 1987 when a group calling itself the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) filed a complaint with Maryland’s Commission on Medical Discipline for comments he made on the Oprah Winfrey show. The New York Times and Mother Jones magazine subsequently found that NAMI received up to 66% of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry. In 2009, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Ia.) opened an investigation of NAMI, which confirmed the Times and Jones reports.
Breggin drew the wrath of the pharmaceutical industry when he commented: “Find the little part in you that loves yourself and see if you’re being loved by your therapist. See if that person cares for you, supports you. If that person offers a drug, don’t even say, ‘No, thank you.’ You can take the prescription and go. Don’t fight about it, don’t get in trouble, but go. Don’t take the drugs. And relate to people who care for you as a person.”
The Maryland Commission cleared Breggin and then thanked him for his contribution to mental health in Maryland.
Adding to the controversy over the links between SSRIs and violence and suicide, Dr. David Healy, a British psychiatrist and author of the book Pharmageddon, said in November 2012, “Violence and other potentially criminal behavior caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret.”
The psychiatric profession and pharmaceutical industry have come under fire for the practice of giving doctors significant financial incentives for prescribing certain medications.
Dr. Gary G. Kohls, in an article entitled “Batman Shooter and His Psyche [sic] Drugs” published in Evergreene Digest, lists at least 40 cases of violent crimes or suicides committed by mostly young people whose medical history revealed the presence of psychiatric drugs, mostly SSRIs. A partial list of cases follows:
• Eric Harris, 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox), and Dylan Klebold, 18, killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves at Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.
• Jeff Weise, 16, had been prescribed 60 mg per day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota on March 21, 2005 before he shot himself. In the end, 10 were dead and 12 wounded.
• Cory Baadsgaard, 16, was on Paxil, which caused him to have hallucinations, when he took a rifle to Wahluke High School in Washington state and held 23 classmates hostage on April 15, 2001. He claims to have no memory of the event.
• On November 28, 2001, Christopher Pittman, 12, murdered both his grandparents while on Zoloft.
• On September 23, 1995, Jarred Viktor, 15, stabbed his grandmother 61 times after taking Paxil for five days.
• On May 21, 1998, Kip Kinkel, 15 (on Prozac and Ritalin), shot his parents while they slept, then went to school and opened fire, killing two classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.
• On October 1, 1997, Luke Woodham, 16 and on Prozac, killed his mother and then went to Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi, where he killed two students and wounded six others.
• On December 1, 1997, Michael Carneal, 14 and on Ritalin, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed and five others wounded.
• On March 24, 1998, Andrew Golden, 11 and on Ritalin, and Mitchell Johnson, 14 and on Ritalin, went to Westside Middle School in Craighead County, Arkansas and shot 15 people, killing four students and one teacher, and wounding 10 others.
• On May 20, 1999, at Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia, Thomas Solomon Jr., 15 and on Ritalin, opened fire on his classmates, wounding six students.
• On September 26, 1988, James Wilson, 19 and on various psychiatric drugs, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school in Breenwood, South Carolina and killed two young girls and wounded seven other children and two teachers.
• On March 7, 2001, Elizabeth Bush, 13 and on Paxil, shot a fellow student in the cafeteria at Bishop Neumann Junior-Senior High School in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
• On March 22, 2001, Jason Hoffman, 18 and on Effexor and Celexa, opened fire on classmates and staff at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California, injuring five people.
• On March 10, 1998, in Huntsville, Alabama, Jeff Franklin, 17 and on Prozac and Ritalin, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then brutally attacked his younger brothers and sister.
• On April 26, 1996, Kurt Danysh, 18 and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now in prison and writes letters trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.
• On February 5, 2010, Hammad Memon, 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student at Discovery Middle School in Huntsville, Alabama. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and other drugs for the medical conditions.
• On September 23, 2008, Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Western Finland, shot and killed nine students and a teacher, and wounded another student before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.
• On February 14, 2008, Steven Kazmierczak, 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.
• On November 7, 2007, Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18 and on antidepressants, killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School, before committing suicide.
• On October 10, 2007, Asa Coon, 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life at the SuccessTech alternative high school in Cleveland,
Ohio. Court records show Coon was on trazodone.
• On February 9, 2004, Jon Romano, 16 and on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at his teacher in Columbia High School in East Greenbush, New York.
Ralph Lopez is a journalist who lives in Cambridge, Mass. He has written for news and commentary websites such as “TruthOut,” “Alternet,” “Consortium News” and “Op-Ed News.”
