Guns take the blame but what about antidepressant drugs?

Nathon Detroit

LIFETIME MEMBER
LIFETIME MEMBER
Guns are quick to be blamed when a someone murders another person but maybe we should start looking at the use of antidepressant drugs. The co-pilot who intentionally flew Germanwings flight 9525 airliner into a mountain was on antidepressant drugs as were all of these folks...

Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold's medical records have never been made available to the public.

• Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/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. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

• Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

• Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

• Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

• Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

• Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

• Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

• A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

• Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..

• A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

• Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

• TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

• Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

• James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

• Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

• Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

• Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

• Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.

• Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic's file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

• Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

• Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

• Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

• Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

• Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family's Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

• Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara's parents said ".... the damn doctor wouldn't take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil...")

• Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002, (Gareth's father could not accept his son's death and killed himself.)

• Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family's detached garage.

• Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

• Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

• Woody __, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.

• A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.

• Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and "other drugs for the conditions."

• Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

• Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. 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.

• Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

• Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

• Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.

SOURCE
 
Last edited:

Nathon Detroit

LIFETIME MEMBER
LIFETIME MEMBER
Are you sure the pilot was taking antidepressants? This article at least seems to imply otherwise.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanw...d-medical-condition-says-spokesman-1427450383

Not ruling it out, just haven't seen that reported yet.

A possible answer to the OP would be simply that already-troubled minds are the likeliest to eventually cause troublesome behavior.
Sorry I forgot to post the source.

Even if it turns out not t be true in this instance I think it's still a valid argument in looking at all the other cases.
 

Granite

New member
Hall of Fame
Well not to nitpick but that doesn't demonstrate he was on any antidepressants at all--it's pure speculation on the author's part.

Bottomline, we don't really know who this guy is (yet), what his reasons were (yet), and we may never will. It's a hideous crime and a terrible tragedy but so far that's really all anyone can say for sure.
 

Rusha

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LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Blaming guns for these killing sprees is like blaming cars for drunk drivers.
 

Granite

New member
Hall of Fame
Blaming guns for these killing sprees is like blaming cars for drunk drivers.

And in the case of the pilot we simply don't have enough to go on right now and there's a chance we never will. As for antidepressants and shooters: Are we saying these drugs pushed the killers over a line, or created the killing instinct, or isn't it more likely the antidepressants were simply ineffective in some cases?
 

patrick jane

BANNED
Banned
Sorry I forgot to post the source.

Even if it turns out not t be true in this instance I think it's still a valid argument in looking at all the other cases.

personally, i see a definite correlation between mental illness and violence and medications, even "self-medicating". it's a huge problem evidenced by school shootings, mass killings, random outbursts and truly psychotic behavior. mild mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, anti-social, paranoia are usually tied to some form of "substance abuse" accompanied with the meds and the "stigma" of being labelled "crazy' or unstable, leads to silence, unreported issues or completely wrong treatment and support. what ever happened to dealing with your inner thoughts, feelings, fears, anxiety etc. on your own (not you), everybody wants a pill if they feel a little down ? periods of "depression", bad moods, low confidence etc, are normal parts of life. somehow in the last several decades they have a pill for "anything". it's FLOURIDE ! just kidding, but it's alarming what the statistics show, and that's only a portion of reality i'm afraid - :patrol:
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
I'm certainly open to the examination, though my only experience with mental illness and medicine is as an ad litum for a friend who was being arraigned for committal and working with two lawyers who were bipolar.

Their meds were God sends, but when any of them went off of them, which mostly seemed to happen when dosages were being adjusted, it was tragic.
 

patrick jane

BANNED
Banned
I'm certainly open to the examination, though my only experience with mental illness and medicine is as an ad litum for a friend who was being arraigned for committal and working with two lawyers who were bipolar.

Their meds were God sends, but when any of them went off of them, which mostly seemed to happen when dosages were being adjusted, it was tragic.

it makes me wonder how many "crazy" folks throughout history went "unmedicated" - :help:
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Guns are quick to be blamed when a someone murders another person but maybe we should start looking at the use of antidepressant drugs.

It wouldn't be at all surprising to find that certain drugs and violent behavior are correlated. Heck, other drugs are used as an excuse by lawyers already for their clients.

The situation for legal drugs will never be treated the same, though, given the money wrapped up in them by drug companies.

As for :granite:, that guy seems to be determined to disagree with everything you say, no matter how sensible it is.
 

This Charming Manc

Well-known member
frightening as that lost is still a very small proportion of the Americans killed with handguns every year.

Guns are quick to be blamed when a someone murders another person but maybe we should start looking at the use of antidepressant drugs. The co-pilot who intentionally flew Germanwings flight 9525 airliner into a mountain was on antidepressant drugs as were all of these folks...

Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold's medical records have never been made available to the public.

• Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/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. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

• Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

• Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

• Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

• Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

• Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

• Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

• A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

• Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..

• A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

• Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

• TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

• Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

• James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

• Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

• Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

• Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

• Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.

• Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic's file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

• Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

• Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

• Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

• Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

• Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family's Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

• Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara's parents said ".... the damn doctor wouldn't take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil...")

• Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002, (Gareth's father could not accept his son's death and killed himself.)

• Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family's detached garage.

• Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

• Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

• Woody __, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.

• A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.

• Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and "other drugs for the conditions."

• Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

• Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. 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.

• Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

• Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

• Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.

SOURCE
 

elohiym

Well-known member
hmm it seems more likely that the connection is with mental illness not the drugs used to treat it.

From the FDA regarding Zoloft:

Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of
Zoloft or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need.​
 

This Charming Manc

Well-known member
fair point but one woudl expect that we are dealing with a high risk group to start with

From the FDA regarding Zoloft:

Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of
Zoloft or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need.​
 

Granite

New member
Hall of Fame
Again: What's the point? That antidepressants drive people to do terrible things, or that people who are by definition already ill will more be more likely to act violently?
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Again: What's the point? That antidepressants drive people to do terrible things, or that people who are by definition already ill will more be more likely to act violently?

There's no curing stupidity.

The point was made clearly in OP. There's always a demand that guns be controlled when stuff goes down; why is no attention paid to the drugs?
 

This Charming Manc

Well-known member
I think it complex enough to review on a a case by case basis, what we dont see is the list of lives saved or remarkably improved by anti depressant drugs.

If you point is that America over simplify s mental health issues and over prescribes certain drugs and does not look at none pharmaceutical treatments enough I would be prone to agree.

If its that ant depressants are bad for teenagers and should never be prescribed, I think you are looking at a subset of the information.

Those are the ones you should not give drugs with suicidal side effects, imo.
 

This Charming Manc

Well-known member
That is a fair point lets look at all elements.

You know i'm a big advocate of low gun ownership societies, but id agree its tends to be combinations of factors that create high murder rates.

However doing that does not make American relationship with firearms either normal or healthy.

There's no curing stupidity.

The point was made clearly in OP. There's always a demand that guns be controlled when stuff goes down; why is no attention paid to the drugs?
 
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