Maybe he was on anti-depressants because he was having a first outbreak of a mental illness that later caused him to become paranoid and/or delusional. I think it's a big jump to say that the medication (rather than the illness that precipitated the prescription) was at fault.

i didn't say the medication was at fault. also, the guy had been treated in the past--as in a while ago--for other dsm issues, so there's no first break thing going on here near as i can tell. all the same there have been too many of these weird shootings with teen males recently placed on anti-depressants. sure makes one wonder.

Philip and Chartreuse,

You might want to look at this link:

http://www.ssristories.com

Also, here is a site by a guy who is not anti meds, Dr. Jay Cohen, who says that SSRIS definitely can cause homicidal feelings:

http://tinyurl.com/378b9f

Finally, several years ago, I became severely agiatated on 5mg Celexa. I remember getting extremely angry with a co-worker. While my anger was justified, it was totally out of proportion to what happened as I had never reacted that way before. Fortunately, he was so shocked that he never reported me to my boss.

There is no doubt in my mind that if I had stayed on that med as I was advised to do, I was headed for serious trouble.

Philip, I am glad you are wondering and I hope you ask the tough questions regarding this issue just like you have done an excellent job of with the other issues that crop up.

AA

I heard on the radio this morning that this guy was estranged from his family (at least from his parents), and apparently had been for quite some time. That probably had something to do with the likelihood of him going on this kind of a rampage. I think the lack of social inclusion - the isolation - of some many individuals is a big part of why this is such a violent country.

I think the drugs (anti-depressants as well as other psychiatric drugs) often make the problem worse, partly because they are so often the only treatment given, with absolutely no attention paid to the social environment.

It's apparent the young man has had a problem for
longer than a "few months". He was a ward of the state for several years, while the other children in that home are not or have not been.
It's time we realize that many of our young people are having severe mental problems. But getting anything done for them is another matter.
Between the social services department bouncing
them around, anything to get their files cleared,
and no mental health care available (I'm speaking of Western North Carolina...it is "outsourced"
to private companies who are more interested in
what they collect from the state, than what they are doing for people with mental health problems)
this is going to get worse.

Poor kid, not that what he did was in anyway justified, however he is a victem of "throwaway kids" and his parents should bear the burden of what their son did. They could hvae gotten him help.

'I am not blaming anti-depressants for this shooting. '

Why do you stick you head in the sand?
so long as people think that way, so long will this sort of violent behavior continue!
Get real..the lost of SSRI fueled violence is very lengthy.
http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?sort=date

Its amazing how stupid modern people are.

WOW. This is the case I have stated re: my daughter and the system. I got her help every single chance she needed it, and she spent time in a teenage psych unit, mis-dx on medications that caused un due angst for her[Zoloft was one of them]. Most ALL of the teens were foster kids.
This is a shocking and sad story, and as a parent who fought for help for her daughter, it is going to make me sick to read ppl. are going to blame the parents and set this boy up as a "throw away" child.

WHEN a person is discharged back into the "real world", after hospitalization, etc. in most cases, take a look at WHO writes and signs the paperwork. Social workers, mental health judges, case managers, and psychiatrists.

As a parent who advocated just this October for my daughter's prevention of residing at a state institution at age 19, I can assure every reader here, that though I had my speech, she has her civil liberty not to have any past history held against her[for being in a psych ward]; it was the JUDGE that allowed her the freedom. I could have held my breath longer than 5 hours waiting for that verdict, and in the end, it was the PROFESSIONALS who make the final decision.

I also find it troubling to say the least, that just like Cho, this dead boy's files are open for public discussion, and any one of us here who has ever been inside a psych ward, on medications or dx any psychiatric label should be forewarned, that the ONLY thing that is going to be discussed now about this young man is his psychiatric wellness/illness, and the real tragic part about that, is no one will speak up about WHY THIS SYSTEM IS SET UP FOR FAILURE.

There is not one State that has funding to provide support for lost souls like this young man, and he is a product of the hospital/RTC environments that he resided in.

I was threatened by my daughter, she kicked me in the knee. I actually just wrote about that on my blog. The psychiatrist used that against her in court, and called the kick in the knee/shin "attempted murder".

THIS is Pandora's Box, of which most people know nothing about. It is a system that is all we have to work with, and until it is improved--such as proper funding and outpatient respite centers--these tragic events will keep happening.

I also truly believe, that we have a major shift in American culture, based on technology, medications, ADHD assault placed on boys ---there are so many facets to what happened, and the problem is, that the culture has shifted, and the system remained the same.

There are generations of kids coming down the pike that need to feel, "I count", thus this young man's note "now i will be famous".

Spend some time inside RTC's [locked down foster kid wards]and see what neglect is happening to those kids. It's shameful, and many RTC facilities are operated by ONE company and have facilities across the country.

Look beyond this tragedy, the answer is not to lock ppl. up as preventative measures, it is now the time to ask ourselves as a society what has gone wrong.

Oh, I can just imagine the reports that would come out if this was my daughter, and it would be full of errors, charts that don't match up, and arrogant doctor opinions.

As a parent in this system, I have to say, I HAVE TO TRUST PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT, and if anything went wrong, it is the professional's fault, lack of judgement, inability to predict the future, lack of funding, and states that do not provide shit for care.

kent, ya i agree with ur comment. people who dont have the money to talk to a doc or even find a good one who works for you tend to just get the meds and dont really work out the prob! and let me tell ya the meds dont fix you, its only like 10 % of the 'treatment plan' the rest you have to do by talkin to some one and understanding your self and ur condetion! to many people think o well i take the pills thats good enough.... WELL ITS NOT... theres alot more to it then that, and it sounds like he had to much on his plate he couldn handle it and finaly broke down.....

Chartreuse- impeccable Pharma rep logic: blame the disease, not the drug. As someone who never had any psychological problems before taking an SSRI for an "off label" complaint, I can say with certainty (at least for myself) that these medications have the potential to provoke extremely bizarre and aggressive behavior. I can not speak for anybody else, including the shooter in Omaha. I also don't think that we could ever say with any certainty that meds "caused" this. But then again, pegging this all on "mental illness", and thereby, implicating all of those labeled mentally ill seems equally facile to me. Blaming this kind of tragedy on a "chemical imbalance" we've never been able to locate sure makes it easy to ignore injurious social processes. and we'll continue to suffer for that, as troubled kids are given "cocktails" of Paxil and Adderall and told to shut the fuck up.

Philip, you are right. There have been just too many of these rampage shootings in the last 20 years.

I am old in age now so I followed the news for over 50 years and there were never these kinds of shootings happening at such a fast clip pre-Prozac. There might be one or two shootings reported in a decade. I don't think there was a one in the 1950s and the first biggie was in the 1960s with Charles Whitman and the Texas University tower shooting. This incident was discussed in the media for FIVE years. Then nothing for the longest time - even all the years of the Vietnam protests with all the illegal drugs floating around - there was nothing like all these rampage shootings.

As for the foster care system, it was worse, far worse then in the 1950s & 1960s, than it is now. The orphanges had just closed and nobody wanted these kids. The adoption agencies had too many kids [pre-abortion days] and these kids literally lived on the streets. But they didn't shoot up the schools, the libraries, the stores, etc. Why? Because they weren't on antidepressants [other psych drugs?]. They scraped by and grew up on their own as best they could.

So what is it about antidepressants? I am not saying that antidepressants don't help some people. I don't know. Maybe they do. This is not my issue.

But I bet if you gave a kid back in the 1950s living on the streets of NYC, a drug whose listed side effects include hostility, agitation, abnormal thinking, rejection sensitivity, psychosis, confusion, etc., there probably would have been plenty of rampage shootings.

In the mid-1990s a defense attorney asked me if I would speak to a woman in jail in Houston who was going on trial for shooting to death her 15 year old daughter and shooting & wounding her 13 year old son. She was a middle-class woman, a substitue school teacher. She was in a state of Prozac withdrawal at the time of the murder. At the jail, the woman told me she had started and discontinued Prozac on five different occasions [an extremely dangerous practice]. I did come right out and ask her, though, what she was feeling at the time she committed the act. She responded, "I had no choice". Several years later, this was what Kip Kinkle said when asked why he had gone on his Springfield, Ore. school shooting rampage. Kip K. was also in Prozac withdrawal and he used the exact same words: "I had no choice". So what does this boil down to - some kind of obsessive feeling or thinking? Is this some kind of uncontrollable impulsivity and I do mean uncontrollable in that the perp had "no choice".

Leaves food for thought as to what these drugs could be doing both in withdrawal and while on them. Now I know that it is very rare to kill someone because of an antidepressant. In the clinical trials for Effexor, "homicidal ideation" was listed as RARE which means it happened to less then 1 in a 1000. But think of how many people are on these SSRIs & SNRIs.

I think it solves nothing to get into an neverending debate in the "either/or" style (ie, was it the depression, or the drugs). The fact is, the manufacturers acknowledge that SSRIs, for one, give rise to suicidality and aggression. Tobin v SKB was settled in favour of the plaintiff, on that basis.

Robert Hawkins is not available for comment, so speculation as to the cause, even informed speculation, is probably unhelpful. In the Tobin case, it was held, on the balance of probabilities, that Paxil caused Donald Schell to murder three members of his family, before killing himself. There are enough similarities between Schell and Hawkins (both are reported to have acted out of character, for instance), to raise concerns. That nobody in officialdom appears overtly concerned is the greatest concern of all, to my eye.

Matt

wow rosie, i'm impressed with your comments. i have never thought about the fact that 1 in 1000 with homicidal ideation, or the stats for "suicidal ideation" which i don't know without looking it up - but on the surface these stats have never really phased me. i was paying attention only to the effect on me (and my son) and thinking we'd be the lucky ones. i need to get my head out of the sand. if 1 out of 1000 are out of their minds, wanting to kill someone or themselves, that's a scary thought. the only solution i can see to this problem is that docs don't prescribe ssri's and let the patient walk away into the sunset. constant monitoring is a requirement!

today i'm dropping my effexor again. i did it a few a years ago and was horribly sick for about a week - i'm hoping this time it will go better. i have a few backup and the moron rheumatologist who prescribed it to me (with no mention of side effects or withdrawal effects) would gladly renew my prescription if i have too hard of a time.

i should also mention that my son (bipolar) has stated to me on more than one occasion, that he would likely kill someone or himself if not for his meds, which include abilify, wellbutrin, and seroquel. (he is to taper off the seroquel if the abilify has no debilitating side effects.) he had these thoughts prior to medicating, these thoughts are not side effects from meds.

there are two sides to these stories, but the commonality is to "watch out for the side effects"! someone has to care for these people, treatment cannot always solve a problem without follow up care. CARE, people.

I was reading my local paper this morning and was reading about the mall shooting and what scared me was the fact that the night before the shooting Robert Hawkins had shown his sks semiautomatic rifle to his foster mom and she didn't think anything of it. that alone would have sent up some red flags.

The person who seems to know the most about homicide-suicide from SSRIs and SNRIs in the whole World is Attorney Karen Barth-Menzies, late with the Baum Hedlund Law Firm in L.A. I talked to her at length about the Cho case at Va Tech but she was not consulted in the end.

I have written reporters or editors at three national papers today about the Omaha case and begged them to learn about this side effect, which seems to be most common when going on the med., or coming off the med. It is almost NEVER mentioned. The toxicology report, or its quality, are almost never mentioned. I envision drug reps hustling to the scene of the crime, hushing everything up, but that's me; mother of a son dead from Zyprexa.

Of course this is not always the cause, but the use of SSRIs is high, the country is a wreck, services for foster and mentally ill adults are really hard to find. I see it as crucial that Phil's blog and we alert and pester the mainstream media so that this becomes part of the discourse. Lotta talk about guns, no talk about the possible impact of SSRIs.

It sounds like if his Mother had some information of her minor son being in possession of an illegal firearm, she should be held criminally liable. It also like if that information is true, this could be a Columbine situation all over again. Ignorant parents who refuse to take interest in their children, resulting in children taking extreme measures in order to gain attention.

As for the medication issue, I feel it is a double edged sword. Are we perpetuating stigma by questioning anti-depessants everytime we have a mass murder? Hundreds of thousands of psychiatric medications are prescribed every year while mass murders are very rare. Are we willing as consumers to quickly assume the two are related? I believe it is a slippery slope I am not willing to take......

Actually Sharon, unless he made a reference to threatening someone or himself [danger to self or others] with the gun, he as well as you as a United States citizen can own one, have a permit, and show it to someone too.

Just because he had a past mental illness history, one does not need to pre-judge anyone.

People with mental health disorders of any kind, seem to be scrutinized the hardest.

Sure, it's easy for you to say "red flag" alert--and here's the deal--even if he DID say he was going to kill himself or anyone else, no one can be detained for speaking, I know this from being within the mental health legal system since 1999.

The person has to actively represent "danger to self or others" and if you want to know how hard it is for someone to be detained for mental health care--I don't promote this book--or agree with the author's tactic--but read Pete Earley's book. Desperate man gaining his child "care".

OR, call NAMI and ask them what they think we all should do with ourselves and others.

Oh shit, I ran down roads chasing my daughter who was waving her own red flag for help to her mental health state funded system case manager--and they didn't do a damn fucking thing.

She had to stop traffic with her body, after 3 solid days of decomposition and added medical issues, and be declined hospitalization and here is the cold hard fact and truth: we/people have to be at the brink of death or destruction to gain any health care.

[here is the silent gap, no one knows what to do to fill this space and keep our civil liberties in tact.]

Unfortunately, the mental health system in America is defunct, lacks funding, proper out patient care and the ONLY reason people ever CARE AT ALL IS WHEN THIS SHIT HAPPENS.\

I think this is called arm chair commentary based on lack of experience.

You have to wonder, with the reports that the shooter was being treated for depression and was dosed on antidepressants, why the media hasn't lined up at the prescribing physician or mhp's office to inquire and hold the prescriber accountable.

The New York Times has a pretty good article on the shooter this morning -- what a sad story, abandoned by mother at 3, disowned by rest of his family in his teens. Health and Human Services spent an estimated 265K on this kid over the years treating and counseling him (i.e. medicating him). He had every diagnosis in the book -- what a tragedy of mental health care. It even sounds like there was a sweet kid locked up in there. His suicide note is a tearjerker. In it he says "I've just snapped." Well I for one sure know what I think made him snap and the article does omit that -- the antidepressants he was started on in the last few weeks -- I'd love to know which one and what dose -- we can bet it was some megadose because it wasn't the first time he'd been on this stuff. It's criminal. When are we going to wake up to the truth of what's going on?

The anti-depressants are a red herring. He had a history of threatening to murder. Diagnosis - psychopath.

Dr.Steve's link is broken in his comment here, though I found one working at the Lasy Psychiatrist's comment section [for Dr.Steve's blog]. He makes a comment that people just do not "snap" then basically plan an action, such as going and shooting people up at a mall. Dr.Steve also has issues with the suicide note. It's worth taking a look at from another perspective. I think that most people will agree, as with Cho, the mystery we cannot wrap our minds around is how it really appears to be what it is: pre-meditated murder. Cho took the time to make a video, and mail it...this guy wrote a note, got a gun and went to the mall.

I think Dr.Steve is right. There is a psychopath category that people forget exists--think about it, we do have murderers in prison, and I feel planned attacks are basically psychopathic choices.

SSRI's or not, this was a plan of action, and was a choice. SO was Cho's. I don't care about up bringing, sad but true, many people have shitty lives in childhood, and do not shoot up people at malls or college campus' as a result.

Dr. Steve thinks Robert Hawkins is a psychopath because Dr. Steve does not understand the SSRIs.

It boggles the mind that academia is arguing psychopath vs. non-psychopath in this latest shooting while this country is being shot apart, literally, by these drugs.

I posted six stories on www.ssristories.com today. This brings the total number of tragic shootings [since Prozac came on the market] & other criminal acts involving SSRIs to 2,007. These shootings happened in computer companies, libraries, churches, schools, etc. etc.

Well, I guess this is to be expected. Academia is still arguing whether there is an increase or a decreaase in suicides since the black box warning. It is ludicrous. Our country never even had these shootings during the terrible days of the Vietnam protests. Sometimes I wonder if academia is retarded.

Thanks Doc Steve and Stephany,

It’s occasionally refreshing to read this forum and see that some folks are not part of the herd mentality or "type", shoot from the hip (dogma) and some do take time to think and reason. Life is not all psychotropic drug related.

Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com

btw people, steve is not a doc. his handle is dt steve not dr steve. yes there are psychopaths out there. i haven't seen convincing evidence that hawkins had that in his background--sorry but we just don't know enough about the problems with the step mom when he was 12 to say otherwise and for god's sake he was 12!--but what he did in the mall was sure as hell psychopathic. now the question is what turned him psychopathic.

Actually it is DR. Steve according to his blog which Stephany found for us http://thetoptwoinches.wordpress.com And maybe his remarks about the suicide note do reflect that it could be more complex than my "literal" interpretation. However, there have been testimonials to his disposition that suggest he evoked affection in some people. I still say anyone who says antidepressants are a "red herring" has never been exposed firsthand to an adverse reaction or examined the recurrent themes of treatment in these rampage shootings that are consistent with scores of murder-suicides that are occurring every single day. I also think it's preposterous to think that just because there was some "planning" involved in a rampage that it couldn't have been prompted by the drugs. What's that all about? This kid had been on and off for them for years. They lead to all sorts of obsessive rumination and violent ideation that can come with bizarre behavior that extends over a period of time. Just because someone writes a note and purchases a gun does not mean they were not acting under the influence of toxic substances in the brain.

It's easy to identify a psychopath in retrospect but virtually impossible to predict such a rampage. Not everyone who has a sh*tty childhood shoots up a mall, not everyone who shoots up a mall has a sh*tty childhood, and of course there's never been a genetic component to these types of crimes identified. Do these drugs create monsters who shoot up malls when they otherwise wouldn't, I certainly think those of us who think it likely have some evidence on our side.

The reason we are having all these shootings is because many people believe that life is not all psychotropic drug related. In regard to the SSRIs [I don't know about the other psych meds],
it is useless to try and pinpoint the cause of multiple [and I do mean MULTIPLE] shootings on such things as bullying or bad childhoods, etc.

Bullying and bad childhoods have been going on since Cain & Able. We did NOT see this tremendous number of shootings in the pre-Prozac era.

Pharma knows it and they have convinced the docs that to breathe the word "antidepressant" around a rampage shooting might cause some unknown person to commit suicide. Thus, the University Health Clinic records for Cho are missing. The toxicology report for Cho was never released.

Yesterday the shooting was in Colorado. Five are dead and four are wounded. It happened at a church. The perp was angry because he had been asked to leave the training program for missionaries because of 'health' reasons. Do you think we, the general public, will ever know what these heatlh reasons were? I doubt it. Instead we will be looking at our navels [the perps' navel?] and trying to analyze whether he was a psychopath or maybe a sociopath. Forget the toxicology report. On with the psychoanalysis.

SSRI's boost serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter known to correlate with anger. It's a no brainer. Many people are depressed because of internalized anger. Sometimes these meds help get the person out of him/herself and direct the anger or action appropriately. Sometimes, it is too much serotonin, or the anger is not ready to come out or the person is not in a safe space to process that anger, especially young people, especially in foster care. THIS IS WHY KIDS SHOULD NOT BE DRUGGED AND WHY NO ONE SHOULD BE FORCIBLY DRUGGED! How do we know they are not repressing shit for good reason? And adults should be told about tryptophan.

another theory to ponder re: what caused his psychopathic mall shooting. did he play violent/bloody/shooting video games? entering into a world in his mind where human beings were not real to the extent that the gore/blood and guts were numb to him? was he living out a twisted fantasy? if he had people in his life he was lashing out against, why didn't he take them out instead? why go into a public place? we sure can date things back to pre-Prozax/Luvox/Accutane era--but why is it boys? [who shoot]what about the girls in the foster care system? could it be because guns are more available? what about serial killers? Bundy, or the Green River Killer? I think there are simply no rational explanations for these murders. I also am not disagreeing with SSRI& violence connection. I'm adding in the question directly to why is it guns, boys, video games, lack of father/mother role models? I'd like to know what the LP thinks of this; isn't he a forensic/specialty psychiatrist?

Thank you Philip,

I stand corrected. I mistook “DtSteve” for stevebMD whose blog site is

http://mybestthinking.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the clarification.

Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com

re: dt vs.dr. "steve"--i personally don't give a hoot who claims to be what, as if we all trust doctors opinions as concrete-- i merely came across a comment that was another avenue of thought. the guy "dr.steve" comments quite a bit over at the Last Psych, so it caught my attention. the "dt" here was a typo on the commenters part.

For interest and broadening the discussion further, here is one of The Last Psychiatrist's thoughts on the Cho murders.

'Rodriguez said her son's life had been a challenge from the start. She divorced Hawkins' father when the boy was 3-years-old, she said, and by 5 he was taking prescription Ritalin and Zoloft. She said she watched, feeling helpless the way a parent can, as raw anger took root inside her son. '
=====

Mall Shooter's Mother: 'Dear God, No!'
Maribel Rodriguez Tells Diane Sawyer She Did 'Best' She Could With Her Son
By CHRIS FRANCESCANI & JIM VOJTECH
Dec. 13, 2007 —

"Dear God, no!"

It was the first, anguished thought that sprung to the mind of the mother of the Omaha mall sniper Robert Hawkins when she realized her son was the killer.

"Dear God, no!,'' Maribel Rodriguez repeated Thursday morning in an exclusive interview with Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America"

"No, not him,'' she said, carefully framing her thoughts at that moment. "He is NOT doing this!'' she said emphatically, then sighed deeply.

Rodriguez said her son's life had been a challenge from the start. She divorced Hawkins' father when the boy was 3-years-old, she said, and by 5 he was taking prescription Ritalin and Zoloft. She said she watched, feeling helpless the way a parent can, as raw anger took root inside her son.

First there were fights at school, she said. Then he was caught smoking cigarettes. Then marijuana.

etc
abcnews.go.com/GMA/story

Church shooter Matthew Murray, like Omaha Mall Shooter Robert Hawkins, Columbine's Eric Harris, Finland's Pekka-Eric Auvinen and virtually every other school/mall/church/college mass murderer had been taking antidepressants which would certainly be a relevant factor as to his state of mind and behavior. Antidepressants all have FDA-mandated Black Box labels now warning that they can cause suicide and violent actions.

Posting under the name "nghtmrchld26" on 10/1/07 titled "Re: Drowning in despair..." Murray says in response to questions like "Have you seen a therapist?" "Have you tried medications?"

"Guess what? Believe it or not.....I'VE TRIED ALL THAT
People then usually assume that I only tried prozac (or some other drug) for two days and got upset that it didn't "work" and they say "oh well, you need to give it more that a couple of days to work"....I don't know how 8 months is only a few days...but maybe you f***ers who can only come up with lame ass answers need a good ass kicking. These lamers will also say "well maybe try a different therapist? or "just......keep trying"

So for eight months of Murray's life before going on a killing spree, by his own words, he was getting counseling and taking "Prozac or some other drug". This isn't about religion or guns. Its about people being driven out of their minds reacting to antidepressants and using the best weapon of choice which is usually a gun. Women reacting to antidepressants seem to like to use a knife or drowning and the target is usually their children. Case in point--Andrea Yates. You have to look well beyond this one case to see a consistent and reoccuring pattern of violence caused by people on SSRI antidepressants. This was first and best covered in the American Journal of Psychiatry in a study of Prozac causing suicidal ideation by Harvard's Dr. Martin Teicher dated Feb, 1990.

Its about people being driven out of their minds reacting to antidepressants and-

I've been on anti's (at least 6 different ones) since `99. It's not the anti's only, it's coping with this society. It's about the condition your mother was in when you were born. Mine was an alcoholic.

I was on celexa for a while(try again) and never had a "killing" urge. I just could'nt get it up....

Grow up and do the Right thing; blame yo mama.