Stop the drugs that cause the killings

[donsu]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_52.shtml


-snip-

Stop the drugs that cause the killings
April 19, 2007

Editor:

Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui joins the ranks of mass murderers like Columbine killer Eric Harris, Red Lake, Minnesota, school shooter Jeff Weise, Oregon shooter Kip Kinkel, child killer Andrea Yates and Kentucky workplace killer Joseph Wesbecker.

The common denominator in the above cases and in most school shootings is the killers were taking antidepressants. The antidepressant Effexor which Andrea Yates was taking now warns that it can cause Homicidal Ideation in addition to Suicidal Ideation. Yes, the most commonly prescribed antidepressant in America that millions of people take has a side-effect of making some people want to kill others. A personal account of how antidepressants turned even a high school teacher into a killer can be found at http://psychrights.org/Stories/StephenLeith.pdf. Everyone taking, prescribing or dispensing antidepressants should read it.

A search of American newspapers finds that almost every day someone commits murder and/or suicide while on antidepressants. While celebrities like Brooke Shields are praised for promoting Paxil to new mothers, other celebrities like Tom Cruise are shouted down for exposing the dangers of them. Go figure.

The real culprit in all of this is our own Food and Drug Administration which is controlled by drug companies. While Great Britain has banned the use of antidepressants for anyone 18 and under, the FDA merely puts a Black Box warning on them, saying they can cause suicide and violence.

Every person on antidepressants has the potential to develop overwhelming urges to commit an atrocity like the Virginia Tech murders. To stop these killings we need to stop psychiatrists and groups like TeenScreen and NAMI from filling our schools with kids on antidepressants and complain to our senators and members of Congress that the FDA needs to ban antidepressants and be overhauled to remove anyone with ties to drug companies.

Ernest Ryan
Temperance, MI

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true

[LeftCoast]

1. Ah...more Scientology propaganda I see...

:eyes:

[donsu]

2. what do you mean?

nt

[LeftCoast]

5. Scientologists are pushing this line

Didn't you see couch-bouncing boy arguing with Matt Lauer about psychiatric drugs? All the evidence points to most psychiatric drugs being safe and not causing people to go off on killing sprees. When evidence arises that shows drugs to be unsafe they're pulled from the market. Look at Vioxx. Relatively speaking, few people had problems, but those that did suffered severe and possibly life-threatening complications so the drug was pulled. Why would a psychiatric drug be treated any differently?

[piedmont]

12. You nailed it in one, LeftCoast.

That's exactly what this is.

[Matsubara]

15. I'm no scientologist.

But I'd be very wary of a loved one of mine getting on Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin or any of the others. There are a lot of people out there concerned about the dangers of these drugs who have no connection to Scientology at all. The corporate media has widely covered the risk of suicide associated with these drugs. Are they also controlled by Tom Cruise and Xenu?


What you are doing is about as low as if someone was to call you a shill for Big Pharma for taking the position you've taken.

Why not address the issues on their own merits rather than smearing the poster as being an agent of some space alien cult?

[Deep13]

3. Well adjusted people don't need antidepressants.

People who do on killing sprees are not well adjusted. Consequently, they are likely to be on antidepressants.

It's like saying that since most people who wear eyeglasses have vision problems, eyeglasses must be the cause.

[CountAllVotes]

6. all of these SSRI drugs can cause vision problems in some people

and I am one of them. It says one of the "rare" side effects of SERZONE is "visual trails" which I developed. This "rare" side effect lasted for over a month! I could not drive or do much of anything until it finally went away after 1 month. I only took this crap drug for about 3 weeks! Yikes!

As for Scientology and how it relates to these SSRI drugs is beyond me!

:kick:

[Deep13]

10. Did they make you homicidal?

[CountAllVotes]

21. no not homicidal, just very depressed

my father was dying at the time and these drugs enhanced the depression to the point of wanting to off myself.

I was never homicidal, but suicidal YES. That is when these drugs went in the garbage can for me.

[Deep13]

24. How do you know...

...it was the medication and not the overall situation that caused the depression? I felt depressed when my father died just as you describe, but I wasn't taking anything.

[CountAllVotes]

27. because ...

After I quit taking this sh*t the suicidal thoughts went away. My father died the following year and I recall taking Xanax for my anxiety for a couple of weeks afterwards.

I'd never consider taking any of these drugs again and they are listed as being drugs I cannot take on my medical chart now after my recent experience with "Cymbalta" which I was told was a hormone and had a small amount of SSRI in it. Whew is all I can say about that stuff.

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. OTOH, the wrong drug for the wrong person can be disastrous.

Anyone on psychotropic drugs should be CAREFULLY monitored to see that they are effective and not dangerous to the one taking them. I went into a deep depression at the time of my divorce and was given Xanax and Prozac - and within two weeks found myself fixating on suicide. I mentioned this to the doctor, in my once-a-month meeting, and he blew it off. After three months I knew it was bad, despite him saying nothing, and I changed doctors. The new guy put me on Wellbutin and the suicidal fantasies stopped after a week.

I was lucky, I think, because I've dealt with low-grade depression all my adult life, and I have learned to separate my ideations from my reality, but someone who this was new to might never have realized it.

Drugs can be a good adjuct to psychological or psychiatric care, but can NEVER be a substitute for them.

[Deep13]

26. Xanax is an anti-anxiety medication...

...almost like a tranquilizer. No wonder you were suffering if that was prescribed for depression.

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. The Xanax was supposed to take the edge off the Prozac.

So I was told.

The switch to Wellbutrin flattened it all out, but then it flattened out everything. Took myself off it after a year and returned to being my normal, melancholy self.

[CountAllVotes]

4. I know this is true

I am HIGHLY allergic to all SSRI drugs and they give 'em out like candy! :grr:

I became suicidal on ZOLOFT and I've tried the others too. The worst one was SERZONE and PROZAC, not far behind.

Everyone should be taking one of these drugs that modifies the chemical structure of the brain is what the pharmaceutical industry is telling doctors. Too bad so many doctor are SO STUPID that they believe this!

I used to have a link that worked that showed the commonalities between how SSRI drugs and LSD work on the same mechanisms on the brain.

And they actually wonder why these "incidents" keep happening? I'll tell you why. The answer is: They are dangerous drugs and should NOT be handed out like candy! I think that they are SO dangerous that they should be prescribed cautiously and via triple script too! :grr:

:kick:

[LeftCoast]

7. Amazing...they should use you for scientific research

I mean...what happens to you happens to everyone, right? Unlike every other person on the planet what happens to you can be reliably replicated on everyone else so there's no need for those pesky drug trials involving hundreds of thousands of people.

:sarcasm:

[CountAllVotes]

9. I don't know that it happens to everyone

but even one person and documented other cases if you read the packet insert are too many!

[LeftCoast]

13. That is why these are prescription medications given under the observation of an MD

It doesn't mean that all psychiatric drugs are bad, nor are they bad for all people. If we banned all medications because of the bad reactions of a few people we wouldn't even be able to use aspirin.

[CountAllVotes]

19. the drugs I was very recently given were a "sample"

and oh boy did I ever get sick! Didn't need a damn RX for that!

:kick:

[Deep13]

14. Two points-

And this is not directed at you per se, but is a general observation.

1. this new generation of antidepressant/antianxiety drugs are not for bipolar disorder. Bipolar will become worse with these drugs. I wonder if prescribing anti depressants for the down-swing of a bipolar disorder is the cause of some of these problems

2. These drugs help many many people live close to normal lives that would otherwise be miserable. I will never go back to the way I was before taking antidepressants. Frankly, it is the only thing that has ever helped. I'm not suicidal or homicidal.

[CountAllVotes]

25. if you ever decide to go off of them

enjoy the journey is all I can say as it is a true hell. I have another friend that was on PAXIL and he now calls it "Paxiltoxin". He'd been on it for a few years and got off of it. He was enjoying life as himself once again for awhile, but soon, they had him on another one (Celexa now).

He is taking it for pain. Many of these drugs are prescribed for many problems other that depression. They are given to women for menopausal symptoms, they are given to people that live in chronic pain and those that have sleep disorders and also a myriad of other physical problems as well. I heard Rosie O'Donnell say yesterday that she is on EFFEXOR for menopausal symptoms.

They are not just RX'd for depression, believe me on that one.

:kick:

[enki23]

16. do you know what "allergic" means?

.

[CountAllVotes]

20. yes it means you have extreme reactions

and you get physically sick from them. That is what allergic means.

Has the description changed recently?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

23. An allergy means an over-response from the immune system.

Often characterized by itching and swelling.

It does not mean an bad side effect.

[MADem]

8. Wow, there's more leaping in that letter than Barishnikov at the height of his power!!!!

Here's a few holes I am gonna poke in that missive:

We don't KNOW if, or what, "antidepressants" this kid was on. Maybe his problem was that he went OFF his meds. Maybe his meds weren't antidepressants, but antipsychotics. We simply don't have that information yet. Have they cracked open his head to see if there was a Texas Tower Tumor in there, yet? Do we know any autopsy results?

There are plenty of people who take "this" drug or "that" drug and they do just fine, not wanting to kill themselves or others. Some patients credit them with saving their lives. This generalization that all drugs are bad is as dangerous as an assertion that drugs will perform miracles. The truth is very individual.

How Great Britain's ban on antidepressants for anyone under 18 (are we certain that's true??? Why no, we aren't--it's Paxil and Effexor, not "all" antidepressants, that are banned) would have helped this 23 year old is unclear. But it's certainly a "drama bomb" in the middle of that letter, isn't it?

Talk about a broad brush. Arguments like these aren't arguments, they're diatribes, and really unhelpful in sorting out the real issues.

A little fact, a little bullshit, a lotta heat, little light. Eh....

[CountAllVotes]

11. point well taken

fair enough.

:kick:

[piedmont]

17. Also posted at:

http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/letters/2007/04/virginia_tech_massacre_4.html

and

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/mental-health-parity-gun_b_46275.html


Look, I agree that the mental health idustry in American is nearly useless, and TeenScreen is a scary implementation by Big Pharma, but this seems to be more of a Scientology message than a "let's reform mental health in America so that it really works" message. Science and understanding are the key to effectively treating mental illness, not some quack religion. Sorry if that's not what actually underlies your post.

[porphyrian]

18. Whoa! Stop! Antidepressants SAVE lives. The problem isn't the medication...

...it's with doctors who prescribe it irresponsibly and patients who take it in ways other than prescribed. Redirect your witch hunt, it's wrong.

[SmokingJacket]

28. I think it's important to distinguish between cases where

a person has a long history of mental imbalance, takes drugs for it, and then hurts someone, and the other cases where an otherwise mentally stable but depressed person suddenly has a violent episode.

Throwing the former cases in with the latter muddies the waters.

I know of a life-long, mild-to-moderate depressive who became suicidally agitated for the first time AFTER starting on an SSRI. I'm convinced more research is definitely necessary -- while these drugs have certainly saved lives, the risk of violent (if rare) side-effects might make them a bad idea for someone with a mild illness.

[Minimus]

30. Those "killer causing drugs" saved my life.

I am not a fan of big pharm companies but I cannot describe the relief I felt or how grateful I was after I was prescribed Prozac twenty years ago. I suffered with depression since childhood and never knew how much better life could be. I used to call it my Vitamin P.

Throughout the years I have been on many of the SSRIs at sometime or another and have never felt suicidal or homicidal.

I have autoimmune disorders that cause me pain so I am now on Cymbalta. It is wonderful to be mostly pain free as well as not depressed! Everyone responds differently to medications so I know I am lucky to have such relief.