Posted on 04/24/2007 9:54:29 PM PDT by Coleus
Cho Seung-Hui's murderous rampage – during which he killed 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech – is prompting research into gun laws, resident aliens and graphically violent writings. Investigators also may want to check his medicine cabinet, because psychiatric drugs have been linked to hundreds of violent episodes, including most of the school shootings in the last two decades. The New York Times has reported the killer was on a prescription medication, and authorities have said he was confined briefly several years ago for a mental episode. They also have confirmed that the "prescription drugs" found among his effects related to the treatment of psychological problems. Dr. Peter Breggin, a prominent critic of psychiatric drugs and founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, said even if Cho wasn't taking psychiatric drugs the day of the shooting, "he might have been tipped over into violent madness weeks or months earlier by a drug like Prozac, Paxil, or Zoloft."
While media reports have focused on guns and gun laws, Cho's violent writings and autistic behavior at Virginia Tech and the delay in notifying students and faculty of the beginnings of the shootings, there are those who say the focus should be on his medical history. "In my book 'Reclaiming Our Children,' I analyzed the clinical and scientific reasons for believing that Eric Harris's violence was caused by prescribed Luvox and I've also testified to the same under oath in depositions in a case related to Columbine," Breggin wrote, referring to the 1999 tragedy when Harris and classmate Dylan Klebold shot and bombed students at the Colorado school until a dozen were dead. "In my book "The Antidepressant Fact Book," I also warned that stopping antidepressants can be as dangerous as starting them, since they can cause very disturbing and painful withdrawal reactions," he added.
The TeenScreenTruth website, dealing with the campaign to "screen" children for "problems" and then prescribe drugs, has documented an extended list of violent episodes believed connected to the use of psychiatric drugs. They range as far back as 1985, when Atlanta postal worker Steven W. Brownlee, who had been getting psychotropic drugs, pulled a gun and shot and killed a supervisor and a clerk. Among the specifically school-related attacks the site documents are:
Another case involving a school-age youth – although not at a school – happened in 1986, when 14-year-old Rod Mathews of Canton, Mass., beat a classmate to death with a baseball bat while on Ritalin. And just a few among the dozens of incidents cited, but not apparently related to schools:
The website also cites psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, in a speech advocating for the treatment of children and youth. "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, towards our elected officials, towards his parents, towards a belief in a supernatural being, and towards the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future," Pierce told a 1973 childhood seminar.
Breggin's conclusion that whatever mental manifestations were causing Cho's dangerous behavior, resulting in a professor asking for him to be removed from her class and two complaints of stalking, there was a solution. "The answer to vengeful, violent people is not more mental health screening or more potent mental health interventions. Reliance on the whole range of this system from counseling to involuntary treatment failed. There is not a shred of scientific evidence that locking people up against their will or otherwise 'treating' them reduces violence. As we'll see, quite the opposite is true," he wrote. "So what was needed? Police intervention." He wrote that "it's not politically correct to bring criminal charges against someone who is 'mentally ill' and it's not politically correct to prosecute him or to remove him from the campus. Yet that's what was needed to protect the students. Two known episodes of stalking, setting a fire, and his threatening behavior in class should have been more than enough for the university administration to bring charges against him and to send him off campus."
He continued with a warning, "And what about drugs for the treatment of violence? The FDA has not approved any medications for the control of violence because there are no such medications. Yes, it is possible to temporarily immobilize mind and body alike with a shot of an 'antipsychotic' drug like Haldol; but that only works as long as the person is virtually paralyzed and confined – and forced drugging invariably breeds more resentment. "Instead of offering the promise of reducing violence, all psychiatric drugs carry the potential risk of driving the individual into violent madness. For example, both the newer antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and Celexa, and the antipsychotic drugs such as Risperdal and Zyprexa, cause a disorder caused akathisia – a terrible inner sensation of agitation accompanied by a compulsion to move about. Akathisia is known to drive people to suicide and to aggression."
He said he's been writing for more than 15 years about the capacity for psychiatric drugs to cause mayhem, murder and suicide, but it wasn't until 2005 when the FDA issued a warning that such drugs produce "anxiety, agitation, panic attacks …" He said in the Columbine case, Harris "looks the most like Cho. Both were very emotionally disturbed in an extremely violent fashion for a prolonged period of time." Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of Virginia Tech's English department, said Cho's writings were so disturbing he was referred to the school's counselors. "Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real it might be," she said. "But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."
In a statement posted on the TeenScreen opposition site, Sidney Taurel of Eli Lilly noted that it would be "unreasonable" to expect "that there is such a thing as a risk-free drug." Another website concerning the psychiatric drugs, called RitalinDeath, also documents some of these cases, as well as additional ones. Dr. John Breeding concluded in a report shortly after Columbine that there were about five million school children now being given psychiatric drugs, and the number had been doubling every 10 years since the 1970s. "This has got to be a cause for major alarm in all adults," he said. "The bottom line is that we are giving stronger and stronger psychiatric drugs to more and more children. Many of our children are taking more than one of these drugs at a time, and many of these drugs were never even tested and approved for children."
.
Before everyone gets carried away blaming the drugs for the mayhem isn’t this a bit like blaming guns for the violence?
All these people were so mentally screwed up they were being perscribed some sort of drug or other to control or remedy their situation. The fact they went psycho doesn’t mean the drugs caused the problem, it could be they failed to prevent the problem.
Unless someone can conclusively prove that the drugs altered the mental state of the patients to cause them to take their murderous actions than there is nothing much to discuss here.
It isn’t the drugs that cause these conditions.
It is that they are permitted to roam on their own without legal guardianship.
They have already been diagnosed as troubled. A chemical imbalance has been assessed and it is being “treated”.
A drunk in a bar or in a car does not need to get into a fight or an accident in order to be arrested and sentenced so there is precedence for “pre-emptive” protective arrest.
If you’ve been diagnosed as unaccountable for your potential actions by reason of insanity, then you should be committed to “house arrest” (ankle monitoring device) and escorted by a legal guardian when in public.
Then even if the drugs don’t work or you skip some doses, you are still stuck at home with someone watching you.
Why should a chemically altered state be accepted just because it happens “naturally”?
It was said that Cho was functional. No. Cho could “pass” for normal (although there were warning signs to the contrary). He was not “functional” as he lashed out in a severe way last week. That is a serious MALFUNCTION.
its a chicken or egg problem
was the guy insane first and took drugs then shot people despite the drug,
or was the guy just a little nuts, took drugs which caused him to shoot people.
SSRIs kill !
Well, a friend of mine was on these prescription for years - and according to him, the initial period, before the thing sets in, is characterized by increased instability, and best be supervised. Count it as a side effect.
I don’t see the list of all the people who take these drugs and DON’T become psychotic or suicidal
Didn’t I read something about Cho’s own grandfather having no sympathy for the mass-murdering self-styled class warrior?
Just curious: What are these "chemicals?" Do they have names?
I was sceptical about the link initially, but not any more. The class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs, recently merited an FDA order to include a black box warning that they increase the risk for suicidal ideation in folks started on these drugs or had a recent increase in dose. Enter serotonin syndrome or serotonin withdrawal syndrome into PubMed.
These drugs are primarily metabolized by the cytochrome P450 system of enzymes. There's a fairly wide variety of genotypes that determines how fast or slow that any particular individual metabolizes these drugs.
I recently read a pharmacology paper that said 30 percent of Chinese were slow metabolizers of antidepressants, IIRC. A recent human genome study said that for all intents and purposes, there's no difference in between the Chinese and Japanese gene pools. I doubt that folks of Korean heritage, like Cho, have much difference either.
IT’S THE VDGI CONSPIRACY!!!
None of the PubMed articles I looked at really defined serotonin syndrome. For “serotonin withdrawal syndrome” they talked about serotonin sydrome occurring during withdrawal from some narcotic or other drug. Can you define serotonin syndrome for me? I infer that it means too much serotonin; is that right?
IIRC, one of the books by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw I read a long time ago said that serotonin is a neurotransmitter produced in the brain which is considered essential for relaxation, concentration, sleep and calmness. Its lack or suppressioncan lead to severe mental disturbances and even violent behavior. To make serotonin the body requires sufficient levels of magnesium, tryptophan and vitamin B-6, but that American diets are severely deficient in those particular nutrients. Therefore, a major problem (not considered by most researchers?) is that there is little or no serotonin to “take up” in the first place, so therefore relaxation, concentration, sleep and calmness are out of the question anyway. Your comments?
PubMed may not be the easiest to use for novices. My advice is to limit the search to review articles initially. Then you need to look for the articles that show up with green or orange rectangles during a subject search that indicate the whole article is free. These green or orange rectangles will be to the left of the title. Here's an example:
Enter antidepressant discontinuation syndrome into PubMed. Click on 'Review: 68'. If you check the 10th result, it has orange and green coloring, and it links from the abstract to a complete article with references.
This NY Times' article has a good description of the signs and symptoms.
For “serotonin withdrawal syndrome” they talked about serotonin syndrome occurring during withdrawal from some narcotic or other drug.
Can you define serotonin syndrome for me?
That Times article does a fairly good job.
I infer that it means too much serotonin; is that right?
For serotonin syndrome, yes that seems to be correct, although maybe it could be the rate of change in the concentration, depending on a person's metabolism, drug - drug interaction, etc. I don't recall serotonin levels being measured, just good drug histories being obtained, i.e. the history of legal and/or prescribed drugs. This stuff is not simple. One of the characteristics that caught my attention was that someone could have a syndrome with either starting or stopping these SSRIs. It's recommended to switch to prozac to be weaned off these drugs because it has the longest half life.
IIRC, one of the books by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw I read a long time ago said that serotonin is a neurotransmitter produced in the brain which is considered essential for relaxation, concentration, sleep and calmness.
SSRIs are well known for causing insomnia and decreased libido among other symptoms. Serotonin's effect isn't limited to the brain.
Its lack or suppressioncan lead to severe mental disturbances and even violent behavior.
SSRIs were developed to treat the presumed low level of serotonin in major depressive disorder, aka the "chemical imbalance."
To make serotonin the body requires sufficient levels of magnesium, tryptophan and vitamin B-6, but that American diets are severely deficient in those particular nutrients. Therefore, a major problem (not considered by most researchers?) is that there is little or no serotonin to “take up” in the first place, so therefore relaxation, concentration, sleep and calmness are out of the question anyway. Your comments?
IIRC, tryptophan is serotonin's precursor. Magnesium deficiency is common in heavy alcohol drinkers. Other than that, I can't say except to recommend a daily multivitamin if someone doubts their dietary intake.
Ritalin seems like a real curse. And my husband’s ex INSISTED that both her daughters were ADHD and “needed” Ritalin or else.
I wonder if she’s suing the manufacturer now.
If my kid has attention deficit, he’s gonna have to learn to pay attention because I’m not letting him take that crap.
I guess you don't believe that some folks have adverse drug reactions, which are distinct from allergic drug reactions and drug - drug interactions. Where did you study pharmacology, if I may ask?
I don't recall serotonin levels being measured, just good drug histories being obtained
This is troubling in light of all your education and all the reading you do. Is it possible that different SSRI reactions may be in part due to widely different serotonin levels present in the first place? And that some reactions usually presumed to be caused by too much serotonin not taken up -- were actually due to not enough serotonin being available at all?
I don't know. I do know that SSRIs are supposed to work by keeping enough serotonin present in the synapse between the axons of the "upstream" neurons and the dendrites of the "downstream" neurons, to give a common example. There are other types of synapses.
The problem is NOT caused by the drug per se. Close monitoring of the patient in the early stages of medication is, thus, indicated.
Put the tinfoil hat away, you don't need it now that you know about this common phenomenon.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
