Posted on 12/18/2007 1:06:45 PM PST by neverdem
Associated Press
Attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of a teen sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing his grandparents when he was 12, arguing that the sentence is cruel.
Christopher Pittman shoot his grandparents Joe and Joy Pittman with a shotgun in 2001, then set fire to their home. During his trial four years later, Pittman's attorneys unsuccessfully argued the slayings were influenced by the antidepressant Zoloft - a charge the maker of the drug vigorously denied.
In the brief submitted to the high court late Monday, attorneys from the University of Texas School of Law argued that the 30-year sentence violates Christopher Pittman's Eighth Amendment protection from cruel and unusual punishment.
Such a lengthy sentence is "unconstitutionally disproportionate as applied to a 12-year-old child," according a copy of the petition provided by the Juvenile Justice Foundation. It said Pittman "is the nation's only inmate serving such a harsh sentence for an offense committed at such a young age."
Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia set the minimum age at which a juvenile may be tried as an adult above 12, so in more than half the nation, Pittman's attorneys argue, Pittman could not have been tried as adult and could never have been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Each year about 200,000 defendants under 18 are sent to the adult system, according to the National Center for Juvenile Justice. Most end up there because of state laws that automatically define them as adults, due to their age or offense. Those numbers escalated in the 1990s as juvenile crime soared and legislators responded, with 48 states making it easier to transfer kids into criminal court, according to the center.
Zoloft is the most widely prescribed antidepressant in the United States, with 32.7 million prescriptions written in 2003. In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration ordered Zoloft and other antidepressants to carry "black box" warnings - the government's strongest warning short of a ban - about an increased risk of suicidal behavior in children.
A somewhat misleading headline because the issue the Supreme Court is being asked to rule upon has nothing to do with Zoloft or other SSRIs. The only issue before the Court is whether a 30-year sentence is cruel and unusual for a 12-year-old.
IIRC, his parents are alive. He was staying with the paternal grandparents. He was on a different SSRI, then switched to Zoloft and then just had the dose increased a day or two before he killed them in a state mandated psychosis, IMHO. Call it mania if that makes you happy. I guess you don't believe in adverse drug reactions.
What kind of feelings are these drugs supposed to suppress?
What never gets discussed in theses threades is that ANY class of anti-depressants in their “boost phase” can cause an increased risk of suicide, homicidal behavior and unmasking of underlying mania.
As the anti-deppressant takes effect, the depressed person’s mood energy and ability to mobilize oneself to inner directed action increases. Two weeks into therapy, one had better be in a supportive therapeutic atmosphere, group, family, psychologist or otherwise for at that point a person who has been suicidal in the past may actually have gained the psychic cajones to follow through...especailly if there is some type of set back or upset experienced by that person at the time.
Now what is especially dangerous about these drugs is the unmasking of underlying mania,psychoses, or schizophrenia kept hidden by depression. The anti-depressant alleviates the depressed mood, which may have come about by the individual spending a lot of mental effort in suppressing his increasingly diseased thought processes and irrational urges. The individual, in a falsely “amped up mood” then loses control of his inner tormented state and all hell can break loose.
Certainly, folks can have bizzare reactions to drugs out-side of any other schizoidal disease which may not even be present...but what is more likely is that the anti-depressants simply unmask what is more complicated mental illness other than simply “depression”!
Respectfully Submitted,
Michael Mathis RN
Look up serotonin syndrome. It's not age specific from what I have read in the professional literature. I'm a doc with an interest in adverse drug reactions. Beware of what you find on the net. I'm glad you had good results. Not everyone does.
The symptoms of severe depression...
Such as, for instance, the feeling that the world is crashing down around you; the inability to function without a constant state of fear/panic; utter despair; emotional anguish.
AP needs a headline, not an explanation of why SSRIs cause some folks to kill in a psychotic state of mind. I guess his lawyers figure a cruel and unusual angle is his only hope.
[DSM-IV] a period of daily and day-long depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure in virtually all activities; in children or adolescents the mood may be irritable. Also present is some combination of the following symptoms: altered appetite, weight, or sleep patterns, psychomotor agitation or retardation, diminished capacity for thinking, concentration, or decisiveness, lack of energy and fatigue, feelings of worthlessness, self-reproach, or inappropriate guilt, recurrent thoughts of death or suicide, and plans or attempts to commit suicide.
Antidepressants as a general rule function as stimulants. Some folks can't handle them.
P.S. That's a link to a well respected medical dictionary that you might want to save.
Actually I misread it and thought he did kill his parents. The rest was a joke.
Actually I misread it and thought he did kill his parents. The rest was a joke.
That's not going to do a thing about severe depression, or a host of other mental illnesses.
There are not as many cases like this as you might imagine.
Amateur spiritism is simply not effective in the ace of most of the problems it's tried against.
If you need a doctor, get a doctor, not a shaman.
In Moscow Idaho, there was a guy coming down off of lithium, he killed his wife, shot up the sheriffs office, some officers, a church care taker, the church and then himself...
http://www.spokesman.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=9959
Father causes bird flu scare at airport
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Chronic depression and bipolar disorder both have physiological components based on levels of and response to certain neurotransmitters. Of course hormones and behavior also matter.
Do certain individuals, long pacified by a lack of seritonin, become manic and then violent when given a too high dose? Yes.
Do certain individuals become very depressed and a danger to themselves and other when abruptly coming off medication? Certainly.
The court changed its mind due to depression. Thanks ND.
Are you suggesting that there are even infrequent AEs of serotonin syndrome which are caused by SSRIs? That would be big news. You casually and causally link them implicitly in your imperative statement. There is no such causal link which has been established to my knowledge. Further, the occurence of serotonin sydrome (even in patients taking SSRIs) is not so much as to even make the RARE (less than 1 in 1000) AEs for Prozac, Zoloft and Celexa (the first three I looked at the PIs for).
Are you trying to tell me something specifically related to anything I said? I don’t recall suggesting that anybody visit a Shaman.
If you are saying that drugs are the alternative to suffocating your kid, I’m either going to question your sanity or just suggest that your comparison is a straw man and a sad one at that.
Look, I can understand your personal discomfort if you are taking these drugs to see people commenting negatively about them. But the person who posted this thread, IS a doctor. Are you going to accuse him of being into amateur spritualism or is it just me?
Honestly, I have no idea why you think I’m into putting kids in rugs. I’m not Catholic and I don’t practice exorcisms (incorrectly). I think I mentioned things like exercise, nutrition and mental activity. Not sure how we got from there to where you are at. But even in your worst case scenario, I’ve heard of one kid suffocated in a rug while I’ve seen probably a hundred people shot by kids on SSRIs in malls, schoolyards and workplaces across the country. So maybe amateur spritualism WOULD be a better alternative since it doesn’t cause people to run around killing strangers.
What other drugs can you name which cause people to run off and kill strangers en masse?
If hundreds or thousands of people died because of Bextra or Vioxx, at least only the people who took them died. How do we justify drugs which cause people not just killing themselves but also their family members and total strangers? With the amount of money companies like Lilly spend in politics, its unlikely the FDA is going to treat these drugs like they treat any other drugs which kill people. So trial lawyers end up being the last line of defense unfortunately.
Medically, it is not even know exactly how SSRIs work. I don’t say this out of ignorance. I’ve actually spoken personally with clinical research physicians who work on them for the pharmas and they readily admit that they don’t know. And they don’t know why the side effects are created and have no idea which people will react in which way because this is slightly better than shuffling the cards to try to get a better hand - you don’t know if you will get a better hand, a worse one or one which is just as bad but entirely different.
For all of the people who are, you can’t say cured since there is no such thing with SSRIs, helped you can also find people who have other side effects which would normally be considered mental illnesses themselves. It is just a matter of whether the people likes the new set of symptoms over their old set. But even if there were 5 cases of ‘cures’ for every case where somebody wanted to kill themselves, would this pass FDA approval if it were a heart medication?
You might also find that people who are given these drugs (mostly by people who aren’t experience or educated in doing so) are getting some of the worst medical care out there. If you can’t spot an alcoholic, you shouldn’t be prescribing SSRIs for depression. And try getting somebody off of Lithium or Haldol compared to meth, cocaine or heroine. The latter are a breeze and they don’t freak out while they are doing it. I’d much rather have somebody come to be on crack than on Prozac. At least I know what the crack addict will be going through but I have to be ready for anything on the psychoactive scripts.
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