It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with Peter Hitchins (he writes for the Daily Mail in the UK and I imagine we’re poles apart politically). However, the one thing we agree on is the potential danger of antidepressants – SSRIs.
Mr Hitchens has written about SSRIs and their attendant problems in the past and he returns to the subject in his review (hat tip to the Truthman for this) of the upcoming film ‘We need to talk about Kevin’. The movie is about the perpetrator of a High School massacre in a fictional American town.
In the movie it transpires that Kevin had been taking prescribed antidepressants and uses the fact as part of his defence. However, it seems to be to be a great shame that the film lightly dismisses Kevin’s acknowledged use of SSRI drugs as no more than a cheap defence attorney’s get-out.
Hitchins writes: “I’ve mentioned here before (see index) the extraordinary correlation between such killings and SSRI ‘antidepressants’. (Yes, I know correlation isn’t causation. That is precisely why I call repeatedly for a proper investigation into the apparent link). I’ve also mentioned the growing doubts (see index, under ‘antidepressants’) among doctors about the nature and real effect of these drugs, notably the powerful articles by Dr Marcia Angell, of the Harvard Medical School, recently published in the New York Review of Books.”
I agree – and I believe that antidepressants can cause extreme violence.
All too often in the past, it seemed that the only other people in the world who would ever begin to entertain the possibility were people such as Michael Moore and Dr Peter Breggin in the USA – and in England David Healy, Andrew Herxheimer and David B. Menkes, who co-authored a paper on the subject in 2006 – Antidepressants and Violence: Problems at the Interface of Medicine and Law.
If you want more information, then you can read follow up with these links (or just type ‘Violence’ in the search box on the left of your screen:
Nebraska shooting – antidepressant connection yet again?
Lost in translation – were Anti-Depressants Involved In Finland School Massacre?
A brief history of school shootings
There simply has to be a proper investigation into this issue – and I believe that the drug companies (such as Glaxo) know the problem exists, but have done nothing about it as it would have affected their profits.
seroxat secrets... 
October 19, 2011 at 7:11 pm
You know EVERY time I hear a story in the news about violence/suicide I wonder about the hidden role of antidepressant medication in the story. I wondered the same about the shootings in Cumbria, also about Raoul Moat. I read “We Need to Talk About Kevin” years ago, but at the time even myself, on Lustral, and struggling with withdrawal, didn’t make the connection in the story with the medication, because at the time I hadn’t made the connection with my OWN problems and the medication I was taking. It’s all so clear now though.
October 19, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Peter Hitchins is right to point out that ‘correlation isn’t causation’. But on the other hand isn’t ‘correlation’ one of the core ‘evidence based’ (rather than scientific) standards that psychiatry (probably the main issuer of SSRI’s) uses to define and treat ‘mental illnesses’ including ‘depression’? We are learning much on an ‘evidence based’ scale about the mind altering and in various ways lethal effects of SSRI’s. But whilst the manufacturers refuse to divulge what goes into SSRI’s to evidently cause/facilitate these potentially lethal effects, it would seem apparent by psychiatry’s own ‘evidence based’ standard upon which these drugs are issued, that, their main sponsors i.e. the drug companies do indeed have something to hide.
November 1, 2011 at 12:53 am
The “Correlation isn’t Causation” argument is a complete red herring. It’s just semantics- a clever way of deflecting the layman away from joining the dots… When a psychiatrist says that SSRI drugs do not cause homicide or suicide… They are correct (in semantics)… It is not the drugs that cause them, it is the effects of the drugs when ingested in some individuals that lead to those terrible horrific ends…. We could bring that semantic word-play a little bit further in the game and say that it is psychiatrists whom cause some individuals to commit suicide and homicide because it is psychiatrists who fail to warn of the effects that these drugs cause. It is psychiatrists who have the only clinical power to diagnose and prescribe… Drug companies make the product, they are ultimately the source, but it is the middle man- the dealer- the psychiatrist or doctor who decides which patient should be ingesting the drug… Mainstream psychiatry knows that these drugs are seriously dodgy, and I don’t know why people are surprised that they deny the dangerous effects of them. It’s not in their interest to take responsibility or blame. The entire history of the psychiatric ‘profession’ is riddled with human rights abuse after human rights abuse, the SSRI age is yet another chapter in a disturbing saga of criminality and barbarity in regards to their contempt of our human condition…
November 4, 2011 at 11:47 pm
Thank you, truthman. Maybe like forcing a drug prescription tracking system to follow addicts, pharma checks to doctors could be tracked.