Role of Antidepressants in School Shootings

[Twangbanger]

Family doctors, the folks who treat sniffly noses, are prescribing SSRI antidepressant drugs to children in massive numbers. A few of those children have serious emotional disturbance, and their parents are in denial about it. Several hundred dollars a month for these drugs is the cost of keeping their child out of an institution, and if they're affluent enough, they pay it. (Adam Lanza's father works as a Tax Specialist for General Electric...you know, the staff lawyers who make six-figure salaries to help GE make Billions in foreign profits without paying U.S. Tax on it? Those folks.)

What's the societal cost of this? Eric Harris of Columbine fame was on Luvox when he shot up that school, having been recently switched from Zoloft after it left him "manic." One of the victims brought suit against Solvay pharmaceuticals, but dropped the suit after the company threatened the family with a potentially financially-crippling counter-suit. Meanwhile, the Clinton-era version of the now much-sought Assault Weapon Ban had BEEN IN EFFECT FOR 6 YEARS at the time Columbine happened.

Semiautomatic weapons have been legal for generations. However, the widespread use of SSRI antidepressant drugs on children is a more recent phenomeon, whose time-line correlates perfectly with the rise of school shootings. These drugs have serious withdrawal effects, including agression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts if stopped suddenly (listen to the commercials). These drugs are not intended to be a long-term substitute for institutional care for children with serious emotional disturbance. These kids are getting drugged up, sometimes at the behest of school officials, so they can be moved along in the system without getting the care they need. They reach adulthood, the parents can no longer control them, and poof...Columbine, Aurora, and now, Newtown, CT?


So let's have this "National Conversation." How's this for a conversation-starter: a Senate Bill which stipulates antidepressants may only be prescribed to children younger than 18 by a health professional who is licensed in the specialty of mental health, and the child + parent must check in with a social worker once a month, who may also check with the school principal, as a check on the system to make sure things are going ok.

What's that? Is the courageous Dianne Feinstein too scared to cross the pharmaceutical industry?

This is truly the subject nobody has the courage to address. It's a nationwide psychology experiment being conducted on thousands of youth, some in your community. Goebbels and the Nazis never dreamed of something so large. There is no oversight, no accountability, no attempt made to estimate what havoc this is causing. Nobody wants to talk about it.

 

[Hookeye]

It's been talked about for years (IIRC got a good head of steam back with the Stockton CA shooting in '89).

Nobody wants to listen.

 

[Pitmaster]

Pass your proposal and things will get worse. Anti-depressant and Anti-psychotic medications do far more good than they do harm overall.

 

[Hookeye]

I have seen it given to folks who didn't need it and make a mess of things.
Heck, I discovered a LOT of my coworkers were on SSRI's, usually after they hit 40 yrs old, got a little flabby, cheated on their spouse...............seems as though too many docs hand the stuff out like candy- to people who do stupid sheite and can't handle the guilt/consequences.

A bummer attitude for more than a week? Here take this! (IIRC they don't know how each SSRI works exactly, like at least 8 weeks on 1 before deciding if it works or not).

My one coworker went on 3 different SSRI's in a 2 or 3 month period. What a mess. After a yr she quit. But the damage to her family, bank account, and job was done.

My ex works in a juvi lockdown. Sees many kids on the stuff. It looks to help some, and screw up others. Even when she worked for the reg school system, too many parents don't want to parent and just want their kid on some pill. And the system is all too willing to put them on it.

Some kids still rape, kill or self exit while on the meds.

No sure answer.

 

[femurphy77]

I just hate it when people try to bring facts into an emotional debate!

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

 

[Osobuco]

WOW - now it is SSRIs. I have no idea the scientific/medical background of the OP but I have a VERY strong scientific background and I can assure you ssri's do a lot of good. I have read scientific articles and have friends who work on these medicines. They are indeed overprescribed AND appropriate follow-up is rarely done - but do not blame the drug - blame the prescribing MDs.

 

[UncleMike]

WOW - now it is SSRIs. I have no idea the scientific/medical background of the OP but I have a VERY strong scientific background and I can assure you ssri's do a lot of good. I have read scientific articles and have friends who work on these medicines. They are indeed overprescribed AND appropriate follow-up is rarely done - but do not blame the drug - blame the prescribing MDs.

Blaming the SSRI's is like blaming the firearm....

 

[Denny347]

Blaming the SSRI's is like blaming the firearm....

Yeah, I prefer to blame just the shooter/s. The rest of us may learn a few things by these kinds of tragedies and changes could come out of them. However, the BLAME stops at the trigger puller.

 

[88GT]

Blaming the SSRI's is like blaming the firearm....

iknowright. Because the underlying mood disorder isn't really an issue at all.

 

[Twangbanger]

Careful about what I said folks:

I did not say "ban" antidepressants.

I did not say ADs don't have benefits, in the right place.

I did not say throw the bums in jail who prescribe them.

What I actually said was, when the patient in question is of a minor age, we just need to be a bit more careful who does the prescribing & under what circumstances.

The number of people taking these medications in the US is as great as the population of Canada, and the majority get them from family practitioners, most without concurrence from a psychiatrist or even a psychiatric diagnosis having been made. That's probably ok for most adults with temporary symptoms from going through a hard time in their life, but it's very different when you're talking about a seriously emotionally-disturbed young person, whose parents are in denial and just bouncing them from medication to medication, without regard to what happens when the kid becomes an adult and they can't handle them anymore.

So, couldn't we just take a look at the small demographic of people these mass-shooters come from, and see if we can't do better job when the parent first turns for help?

Americans have made the choice, as a nation, that we want freer ownership of guns that other nations enjoy, and to tolerate a certain higher level of gun violence in our society as a result of it. We are not going to hover over U.S. cities in a UFO with a giant electromagnet, and suck up half a billion guns, anymore than we are going to suck up 12 million illegal immigrants and ship them out of the country, or religious conservatives are going to stop all the abortions. The guns are here to stay. The dangers of guns have been understood, vetted, and ruled upon by the public; they are part of our culture and our Constitution.

But widespread use of ADs in children is something relatively new, and I do not believe this nation is up-to-speed on the dangers of it.
In these mass shootings, so far there seems to be a common causative link, something being kept out of the spotlight, but which only affects a very small number of "special" cases. I think in the case of minor children, if we simply put psychiatric drugs under the control of a doctor who looks at that kind of thing all day long, backed up by the resources of a social worker, we'll get better outcomes. And we don't have to inconvenience the freedoms of millions of people, re-write the Constitution, or spend prohibitive sums of money to do this.

 

[CathyInBlue]

The thing about the young people on ADs that go on to do horrendous things and then punch their own tickets is that the kernel of those actions were already there. The ADs just let them get up off the couch and achieve those goals. The ADs are doing what they are supposed to be doing, for good guys and evil schmucks alike.

 

[jbombelli]

Everybody trusts their doctors, pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies, politicians. You know... the people who make billions collectively by selling us drugs and paying each other off to ensure it keeps happening. A drug for every possible occasion.

Stop trusting everyone who wants to make a buck off you, and suddenly things will start making a lot more sense.

But good look convincing people of that.

 

[LPMan59]

Pass your proposal and things will get worse. Anti-depressant and Anti-psychotic medications do far more good than they do harm overall.

i agree.

However, I take serious issue with the frequency with which these drugs are being prescribed to children. I have patients as young as three (!!!) on stimulants such as methylphenidate. The long term effects of these psychotropic drugs on the development of the brain is still unknown. These drugs (SSRIs, atypical anti-psychotics, stimulants) have a place in medicine.

But I wonder how often prescribers throw medication at the problem vs using counseling/therapy either alone or in conjunction with pharmacotherapy?

 

[Liberty1911]

Yep, far too many mothers and fathers are parenting out of a bottle.

 

[LPMan59]

Yep, far too many mothers and fathers are parenting out of a bottle.

lol mom is anyways. I'd be willing to bet dad is AWOL or on to another baby momma

 

[netsecurity]

WOW - now it is SSRIs. I have no idea the scientific/medical background of the OP but I have a VERY strong scientific background and I can assure you ssri's do a lot of good. I have read scientific articles and have friends who work on these medicines. They are indeed overprescribed AND appropriate follow-up is rarely done - but do not blame the drug - blame the prescribing MDs.

I do not think you can scientifically prove that SSRI's "do a lot of good", which itself is an unscientific outcome. The only thing we know for certain is that they change serotonin levels, and we cannot even prove exactly how they do that. So does this make some people feel better? It must, or they are being prescribed for no reason. But, do we understand the consequences of taking SSRI's and altering serotonin levels in brains with all sorts of disorders? Hell no! What they do is prescribe SSRI's to almost every single patient who complains of stress or sleeplessness, social problems, anger, etc., and then ask if they are doing better in follow up appointments. It is 100% trial and error. And the worst part is, when people say the meds didn't make any difference, troubled individuals are KEPT on the prescription anyways, and told that it just takes months to start working (the biggest load of snake oil crap I ever heard, but great for big pharma).

Will we ever understand what will happen to certain individuals on these meds, probably not. But what we do know for sure is that school mass shootings became an epidemic in America about the same time this class of drugs were approved for children under 18. What we don't know is how many mass murderers were on SSRI's because there have been cover ups, but there is evidence that most have been prescribed these drugs.

So, IMO it is a valid concern, especially since many users report surreal dreams and the inability to determine reality from dreamscapes. What we should be doing at a minimum is something MORE SCIENTIFIC, like a baseline brain scan and ekg prior to the prescription of psychotropic drugs, and follow up scans afterwards. We really are throwing wrench in the most complex organ in the universe, the human brain, and not really even tracking the results in any meaningful way. What we need at a minimum is full tracking of the results as it relates to mass murderers.

 

[LPMan59]

seriously.....

 

[Pitmaster]

i agree.

However, I take serious issue with the frequency with which these drugs are being prescribed to children. I have patients as young as three (!!!) on stimulants such as methylphenidate. The long term effects of these psychotropic drugs on the development of the brain is still unknown. These drugs (SSRIs, atypical anti-psychotics, stimulants) have a place in medicine.

But I wonder how often prescribers throw medication at the problem vs using counseling/therapy either alone or in conjunction with pharmacotherapy?

I don't disagree with you at all. I do think that psychotropic medications are frequently over-prescribed for children and often for adults. The biggest problem is that without regular scheduled counseling to monitor progress and assess results effectiveness goes down. About have the half the time parenting discipline and structure needs improvement. Part of the reason for that is the lack of reimbursement for the counseling services. Managed care has really screwed that up. Managed care wants cheap and quick fixes. In mental health you can't hurry time. People need to think and process information before accepting it. You just can't tell people what to do.

There are two components to the effectiveness of medications in mental health. The first is Axis I which is the identified brain disorder, i.e. depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc. which is a chemical imbalance in the brain. The brain is an organ of the body just like the heart, pancreas, liver, etc. Just about everyone has an organ that doesn't function perfectly such high blood pressure, asthma, GERD, etc. So having a brain not function perfectly is part of life for some.

The other component, Axis II is an individual's personality. This is a how person functions socially. There are several types of personality and each one has sub-categories that are used. None of these are treatable and generally can't be changed. Medications can reduce some symptoms in some cases but in general don't do a lot of good.

The biggest problem is that some professionals and most non-professionals don't understand that having both Axis I & II is common. When that happens treatment is extremely difficult and not always effective.

Most people with mental health issues are NOT a threat to anyone or society. The exception is borderline and antisocial personality disorders. Even then, the percentage of people who fall into the dangerous category is low. I'm going to stereotype 2 examples of an antisocial personality and there is a continuum from each end. One example is the old stereotype of a used car salesman who will say anything to sell a car with no conscience. They take advantage of people. They are not particularly criminal but they will take advantage of people with no thoughts of guilt. The other extreme is Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Henry Lucas, type of people.

One reason that mental health gets a bad rap is that people who are successfully treated and managed don't go on TV, radio, or the internet to share the success publicly, unlike many do with addiction. When mental health services are not successful people blame the provider when the reality is their is a partnership in the recovery process and far too often no matter what is done the patient does not cooperate due to not following through.

 

[cobber]

In my day-to-day practically everyone I deal with is on some sort of licit or illicit mood- or mind-altering controlled substance.

The fact that they're also criminal defendants does not prove causality, of course, but is only correlation. Still, it's astonishing.