Lessons from SSRIStories #2: Anecdotal Evidence of the SSRI-Violence Connection
by Julie Wood
Summary of Post #1: Hard as it may be to accept, there is evidence that SSRIs, along with some other drugs, legal and illegal, can cause people to become violent. The connection between psychoactive medications and violence is not understood. News reports that mention psychoactive medications in a story about a violent incident tend to treat the drugs as “proof” of mental illness. Consequently the public at large perceives that mentally ill people are violent, when most of the time, the medication caused or contributed to the violence. These side effects can result from stopping the drug (withdrawal) as well as from taking it. SSRIs can result in craving for alcohol, which is unfortunate because drinking while taking SSRIs magnifies the impact of both substances.
Usually, when the use (or cessation) of an antidepressant is reported in a news item about a tragic incident, it is not because it is considered a potential causal or contributing factor. Mental illness is blamed, when without the medication, the incident probably never would have occurred. Medication prescribed to alleviate anxiety, depressed mood, extreme emotions and other difficult, but transient, human states can create deadly outcomes with permanent consequences. Yet, the finger is almost always pointed at the person taking the meds, and the incident attributed to an inherent condition, instead of recognizing that the medication might be to blame. A few examples are summarized through excerpts from articles posted on SSRIstories.org:
- FATHER OF JAILED TEEN SAYS GIRL NEEDS HELP, NOT PUNISHMENT – Maggie Ward, the 17-year-old Poth girl who is accused of fatally shooting her mother in February, was taking anti-depressant medication because she was suicidal and once called for emergency assistance claiming she was being assaulted when she wasn’t, her father said in a recent interview. Tom Ward, who this week broke his silence with the media over the incident, said his daughter “obviously is mentally ill” and needs psychiatric therapy.
- SUICIDE NOTE FROM REV BREWER – How I came to be in this emotional state, I honestly do not know. Ever since the accident, it seems that I’ve been fighting a losing battle with depression and despair… I did try to seek help where I could. I even went to see a local psychiatrist. Though not a believer, he is a fine man. He put me on Prozac; then he doubled the dosage; and still it feels as if I’m sinking farther and farther into a downward spiral of depression.
- PEDIATRICIAN NOT GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY IN ATTACKS ON CHILDREN – A Champaign pediatrician who attacked her 6- and 10-year-old sons with a knife in February, killing the older boy, was found not guilty by reason of insanity Tuesday after three psychiatrists – including one hired by the prosecution – declared she was mentally impaired…. Ellen Feinberg, 44, was acquitted of first-degree murder in the death of 10-year-old Adam Feinberg and of attempted first-degree murder in the stabbing of 6-year-old Matthew Feinberg… “She was overcome by a belief of emptiness,” Champaign County Judge Michael Q. Jones said as he issued his ruling Tuesday. “An idea just crept into her head: `I want to kill my kids.'” Dietz, who was hired by prosecutors, concluded that Feinberg suffered from major depression and undiagnosed psychosis. The judge agreed… By all outward appearances, the family had a comfortable life in Champaign’s upscale Cherry Hill’s neighborhood… The day before the attack, Feinberg met with her therapist who was sufficiently worried about her patient’s mental state to call her psychiatrist, who raised the dosage of her antidepressant.
- TAXI DRIVER WAS SLAIN BY MAN FLEEING EARLIER HOMICIDE, POLICE SAY – Two fatal shootings that occurred two miles apart Friday in south Minneapolis have been traced to the same gun and a single suspect, police said Monday. Investigators believe that a 30-year-old Cottage Grove man killed a young Minneapolis woman, drove to the airport but failed to catch a plane and then caught a cab and later killed the driver. Andrew J. Krosch, 30, was arrested on Interstate Hwy. 94 near Alexandria in a stolen Blue & White cab…In the past several weeks, Laurie Krosch said, her husband had grown increasingly troubled despite medication he took for depression and sleeplessness.
- SUSPECT GETS PSYCH TESTS AFTER MOM’S BRUTAL ATTACK – Nancy Reida stood silently in Cambridge District Court – her eyes vacant and her hair disheveled – while a judge ordered her to undergo psychiatric testing following the brutal beating and scalding of her 85-year-old mom. A psychiatrist who examined Reida… told Judge Roanne Sragow the suspect was not taking her anti-depression and anti-anxiety medication [and so would have been in withdrawal].
- RELEASED FROM JAIL ON PROMISE TO TAKE MEDICATION – A Suffolk County Court judge yesterday released without bail a Huntington Bay man accused of trying to kill his 3-week-old nephew, after the man pledged he would continue to get psychiatric treatment and medication out of jail… Judge Louis Ohlig said his decision was…based on Harmon’s previous lack of criminal record and his promise to see a psychiatrist once a week and continue taking medication [Harmon] had also been given a medication, Prozac …shortly before the incident.
- MOTHER WHO STRANGLED SON A ‘MISDIAGNOSED SCHIZOPHRENIC’ – A WOMAN on trial for the murder of her eight-year-old son was a “misdiagnosed schizophrenic”… a jury heard yesterday. Dr Brian McCaffrey, a specialist in forensic psychiatry was giving evidence in defence at the trial of Jacqueline Costello (30). [He] told Paddy McCarthy, for the defence, that… Dr Derek O’Sullivan consultant psychiatrist to the accused had been treating her with medication for depression, not for schizophrenia. Dr McCaffrey told the court that when Ms Costello strangled and suffocated her son she “felt she was doing the right thing”…”She was actually killing Robert but she didn’t realise it, she could not have been persuaded to stop,” he said. The trial continues at the Central Criminal Court.
- A DEPRESSION MORE POWERFUL THAN LOVE – Christine Humbert told her family she never fell out of love with her husband, even after he sliced her neck while she slept earlier this year… She recognized, her family said, that Johnny Humbert had momentarily lost the struggle against mental illness that had plagued both of them for years. Last week, Johnny Humbert killed himself by stepping into the path of a Metrolink train in Anaheim… In the weeks before the Feb. 11 knife attack, Humbert had begun taking a new prescription [Prozac] for depression.
- DOCTORS SAY STUDENT ISN’T COMPETENT FOR A TRIAL – Flake has a history of alcohol abuse and had been taking the anti-depressant Prozac when authorities said he went on a weekend shooting spree this spring… Doctors at MTMHI say Flake… needs complete stabilization with medications and therapy…
- MOM WHO KILLED KIDS RULED INSANE, TWO PSYCHIATRISTS BLAME POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION – Undisputed reports from two psychiatrists led Judge Ruthanne Polidori to conclude… that Bethe Feltman was insane when she killed 3-year-old Benjamin and 3-month-old Moriah on April 9. Many women suffer some degree of depression following childbirth, but few become as psychotic as Feltman, experts say. Such depression has been successfully used as a legal defense in cases nationwide. Defense attorney Craig Truman said Feltman “by all accounts was a wonderful teacher and mom before being struck down by this terrible disease. Bethe Feltman had been hospitalized three times for severe postpartum depression since January and was released three days before she killed her children. Although psychiatric drugs were prescribed, the doctor said it would take at least two weeks for the anti-depressants to become effective.
These few article excerpts illustrate the media’s lack of awareness that medications may have played a role in the tragedies. Journalists are taken in by the illusion just like everyone else. Thus, even as they describe a violent or suicidal act following shortly after the introduction, dose increase, or termination of an antidepressant, they do not appreciate what they are describing. There are hundreds of these stories on SSRIstories.org; a virtual mountain of evidence right under our noses that there is a connection between SSRIs (and other psychoactive drugs) and violence, but it goes unnoticed. It is “hiding in plain sight”.
Next post: The mechanisms by which SSRIs cause violence and suicide
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I can honestly say that I have never have been ‘depressed’ enough to warrant being given a drug called Seroxat, in 2002.
When an Indian doctor, whose ~English was appalling, you should see his childish referral to a Mental Hospital, he could barely write, and, I actually sat next to him with a ‘private’ situation whilst he spent half an hour trying to type ‘the referral’. He told me not to leave, until he had finished his one fingered tap ping.
I had no idea he had done this.
He did not tell me……
My mistake, even bringing up my ‘private’ situation.
Of course, time passed, the ‘private’ problem was resolved.
We are not unintelligent people; we sorted out our own ‘private’ problem.
After a few weeks a ‘Psychiatrist’ from the Mental Hospital arrived.
It was a lovely sunny morning, I was on the beach with my dog, and, his little car drove up and I told him to park in our driveway as we made our way back…..I thought, then, as I think, now, I haven’t really got time for this……I had stuff to do.
What was a complete stranger doing on our ‘private’ property?
In fact, all the disasters from the gp, horsewhipping our life, two hospitals, no checks on Paroxetine, ever, by anyone, took place on our ‘private’ property.
0-8 weeks of an appalling travesty of justice..
A lifetime of regret…from me….swallowing this pill…..which he got so excited about….obviously, the rep had seen him shortly before this ‘psychiatrist’ thought he could play with me.
My Medical Records read like a Who Dun It.
Nobody discussed miles of paper….as all this spun out of control….could they read, could they write…..we were trashed as easily as that…and for a long, long time the sun did not shine on our Garden which became Crow Road……
I know David Healy’s work with Welsh mental hospital records of the last century strongly supports the idea that suicide rates among people with schizophrenia are much higher now than then. What about murders and other forms of violence?
Julie Woods’ archive of “anecdotes” fills in piece one piece of that puzzle: retroactive diagnosis. A lot of notorious mass killers have been pronounced “schizophrenic” only AFTER their crime. It appears this is also happening with less publicized murders involving senseless attacks on friends and loved ones. Many of these people were under doctors’ care, but for depression or anxiety. James Holmes, the Colorado theater shooter, is a prime example. A lot of the modern stigma and fear of schizophrenics, which by all accounts is worse now than thirty years ago, may be due to this.
But neuroleptic meds for psychosis can also cause agitation and violence. I read one detail in passing years ago: in the early 20th century the most common delusions among hospitalized “mad” people were delusions of grandeur. (The old vaudeville-comedy stereotype of schizophrenia was someone who “thinks he’s Napoleon”; I guess that’s why.) Nowadays, it’s paranoia — delusions of persecution, which are more likely to spur one to violence. At first I thought many of the “Napoleons” of yesteryear might have had extreme manic-depressive illness, not schizophrenia. But could this change be related to the meds?
Johanna that is such a good point, about the retroactive diagnosis.
As for figuring out a connection between violence, suicide and use of meds, I have a strong sense that this is a massive hairball. I tried to research that angle and found scads of population studies that really only prove that research in this area has many gaps and biases.
The conventional wisdom in this area, tainted as it is by vested interests, is so hard to challenge with simple logic and clear evidence. The situation is so complicated! But we know that there is at least one doctor who totally gets it, and as long as there is one there is hope.
I don’t know when Doctors and Pychiatrists will wake up. I think they would need to physically take these medications to realize how activating they are. I am so happy that I have gotten out of the death grip of these meds.Many folks are stuck in a spin cycle of drugs prescribed by uneducated sheep doctors. Unfortunately patients continue to get doses increased or additional meds added to a problem originally caused by those very same medications thus making it 100x worse! Im working through a protracted withdrawal that may last another year but I don’t care. I never want to go back anymore . David Healy is the world’s best chance at stopping what will be a worldwide epidemic. Every day hundreds or maybe thousands of people are starting up new psychoactive medications. Goodluck world
What I have sadly discovered is that although we can tell the world how suicidal we become from SSRI & Klonopin withdrawal no one cares. No one is listening. When I was going through Effexor, Trazodone, and Lithium ‘cold turkey’ withdrawal just 8 months past a Klonopin ‘cold turkey’ withdrawal and I’ve been on meds for over 30 years, so this was no picnic by the way.
In fact, I have never experienced psychosis like this EVER. I became so homicidal with rage while going through E, T & L withdrawals that my every moment I was planning on killing targeted people (oh, I knew who they were). My rage so intense that I was not only planning a mass shooting, I knew that I was going to die in the process, it was expected. And I was in this homicidal rage for 5 long months.
And no one cares because our psychiatrist just blame this behavior on our so called underlying mental illness instead of the true cause – severe withdrawal symptoms. If I would have found that gun I so desperately wanted and needed you would have read about it on the news. But it wouldn’t matter, because no one is listening.
Now completely off the psych drugs, I am no where remotely suicidal or homicidal. But who cares? No one. I lost my home to fire while taking my ‘court ordered’ psychiatric drugs: Risperdal, Cogentin, Neurontin, and Ambien. I begged them to treat me without drugs but they didn’t see it that way. And who cares? No one. I had no insurance, no savings. I was left homeless. And who cares? No one.