Furious Seasons

February 15, 2008

UPDATED: Northern Illinois Shooter Stopped Taking Meds

There are now two press reports that the shooter at Northern Illinois University, who killed five people plus himself and injured many others, had recently stopped taking medication of some kind and had become erratic. Authorities have not identified the medication or the type of medication it was. That's all I know at this point, and I'm concluding anything. Just passing it along. More when I know more.

UPDATE: (3:38 p.m. PST) I am just pushing this out there and hope that people will not make too much of this, but it's highly likely that the shooter was taking meds for some unidentified mental health diagnosis. From the Chicago Tribune:

"Authorities in DeKalb confirmed Friday that Kazmierczak had recently stopped taking medication. Thomas said Kazmierczak had confided in him that he had served in the military and received a discharge for psychological reasons.
"'He only discussed that with me in passing,' Thomas said. 'He seemed as normal as you or I.'"

That said, there is no confirmation of what meds the shooter stopped taking recently. Almost every account I've read of this guy stresses that he was a very good student, who stood out in class lectures because he was interested in the material and that people who knew him cannot make sense of this act on his part. So clearly something unusual happened here.

I want to use this opportunity to stress, as I have before, that anyone who takes meds has to be very careful about going off of them. You owe that to your fellow human beings and to yourself. What's more, you need to be just as careful going on meds or during dosage changes. I don't care if you are for or against meds--meds are not be messed with. There are too, too many reports of tragedies involving people coming off meds or going onto meds or who are playing games with their meds. Please, please, please make sure that you involve family and friends in monitoring your psychological condition when you are coming off or going on meds. This is essential.

No matter where you stand on meds issues, I hope we can all agree that these situations need to be managed much better, particularly in younger people who do seem to react very strongly to these medications, both good and bad.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at February 15, 2008 10:39 AM

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Comments

The TV reports are saying that the perpetrator of the latest school shooting was revered on campus. He was a model for other students and was very well liked by all professors. He had no run-ins ever with the police. He was a great student, they are saying, and he was very involved in community activies and was not a loner.

Nobody can understand what happened.

Douglas Kennedy with Fox Cable will do a story on it at 5:00 p.m. EST.

Posted by: Rosie at February 15, 2008 10:58 AM

Some unnamed sources are saying that the shooter was a diabetic and took medicine for diabetes and also two sleep aids.

I don't know if these are the meds he quit taking or if this is a partial list.

Posted by: Rosie at February 15, 2008 11:26 AM

I would just like to add that unfortunately withdrawal cases are very problematic because they can so easily be used to advocate for forced treatment. The "establishment" likes to say it's the "underlying disease" coming back. I do want to reiterate to this readership that even if there are underlying emotional problems, withdrawal of psychiatric meds, even so called benign sleep aids that really are not so benign if they have been taken for more than a couple of weeks, so confound the emotional disturbances that attributing the behavior to the emotions exclusively rather than the withdrawal is missing a critical part of the picture. It is imperative that we study and understand withdrawal much, much better than we do now as well as the long term benefits of treating emotional disorders in alternative ways.

Posted by: Sara at February 15, 2008 12:00 PM

I have just received word that I was incorrect when I said the U. Of N. Illinois shooter was a diabetic.

It is the shooter's father who is diabetic.

Sorry for the mistake.

Posted by: Rosie at February 15, 2008 03:01 PM

University Police: Illinois Campus Shooter On “Medication”

Kurt Nimmo

Truth News
February 15, 2008

As suspected, the Illinois campus shooter, identified as Stephen Kazmierczak, was on medication, although ABC News reports at this time it is unknown what sort of medication.

In the last few weeks, Kazmierczak’s

behavior had become erratic, according to [NIU campus Police Chief Donald Grady], and it is believed the Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medication. The chief declined to specify the type of medication the gunman was on.

As was revealed soon after the shootings at Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui was taking the anti-depressant Paroxetine, which he took from June 1999 to July 2000. Seung-Hui’s “doctor stopped the medication because Mr. Cho had improved,” the New Yorks Times reported on August 30, 2007.

“Recent regulatory warnings about adverse behavioral effects of antidepressants in susceptible individuals have raised the profile of these issues with clinicians, patients, and the public. We review available clinical trial data on paroxetine and sertraline and pharmacovigilance studies of paroxetine and fluoxetine, and outline a series of medico-legal cases involving antidepressants and violence,” notes PLoS Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical publication. “Both clinical trial and pharmacovigilance data point to possible links between these drugs and violent behaviors.”

Bob Unruh, writing for WorldNetDaily, cites Dr. Peter Breggin, a prominent critic of psychiatric drugs and founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, who states that even if Cho wasn’t taking psychiatric drugs the day of the shooting, “he might have been tipped over into violent madness weeks or months earlier by a drug like Prozac, Paxil, or Zoloft.” In his book, The Antidepressant Fact Book, Breggin “warned that stopping antidepressants can be as dangerous as starting them, since they can cause very disturbing and painful withdrawal reactions.”

ABC reports that “Kazmierczak’s interests are listed as corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice, according to [an] essay, and he had plans to co-author a manuscript on the role of religion in the formation of early prisons.” In 2006 Kazmierczak co-authored the essay entitled “Self-Injury in Correctional Settings: ‘Pathology’ of Prisons or of Prisoners,” in which an attached biography describes him as having just begun his graduate work at NIU.

According to Kazmierczak’s coworkers at the Pirates Cove Childrens Theme Park, he had a penchant for violence. “I remember Steve Kazmierczak,” an anonymous coworker wrote on a music site message board in 2006, “the kind of person who injured kids on the train ride cuz he was mental and he shouldn’t be given domain over kids on little faux-traincars with an aluminum baseball bat…”

In short, Kazmierczak appears to be a prime candidate for violent behavior, especially now that authorities in Illinois are revealing that he was on medication, although as of yet unspecified.

Is it simply a coincidence that Mr. Kazmierczak decided to launch his murderous campaign at precisely the time the Supremes are taking up critical issues related to the Second Amendment?

Posted by: Jim at February 15, 2008 03:51 PM

What can be planer...this has ANTI-DEPRESSANT driven murder/suicide writtenn all over it. Already we see the news spinning it to make it seem the unknown meds were all that kept him from going beserk. But my guess he was on an SSRI anad as we known from the Columbine, Omaha, Finland etc cases, they are implicated in mass murder...WHEN WILL THESE MEDS BE BANNED?

Posted by: brian at February 15, 2008 05:53 PM

brian: it's not clear to me yet what meds he was on or recently off of. until then, i am reserving judgment. i wish others would do the same.

Posted by: Philip Dawdy at February 15, 2008 06:19 PM

Brian

Guns kill people not any particular psychiatric prescription drug. How about much tighter gun control - e.g. applying to buy a gun and full background checks being run by a professional investigative agency? This would have prevented the sale of the weapons in this case.

Untreated depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are behind most suicides. Please don't be so irresponsible as to damn multiple classes of drugs that have helped many people to function and enjoy life.

I should add that I am appalled by the number of unnecessary prescriptions written for cases of people being "down in the dumps" as opposed to genuine unipolar or bipolar type I, type II depressive disorders. This is not the issue here.

Posted by: Dr.G.Jones MD at February 15, 2008 09:55 PM

dr. jones: thanks for your comment and thoughts. handgun purchases all face the five day waiting period under federal law and are vetted by the doj which i think is fairly professional. apparently this guy cleared those hurdles. rifles and shotguns are not covered by this law, aka the brady bill. some states but not all take away the gun buying rights of anyone who has been involuntarily committed for 14 days.

as for suicide being driven by untreated mental illnesses, that's true but only to a degree. there are many documented cases of ppl who've killed themselves while being appropriately treated. and no i am not saying the meds made them do it. elliott smith is one of the best known cases.

Posted by: Philip Dawdy at February 15, 2008 10:26 PM

Dr. Jones,

With all due respect, can you provide a link to statistics that show that mental illness is 100% responsible?

Also, I am curious as to how you know that these drugs have helped so many people to function. What questions do you ask your patients to get this information? I am wondering because my psychiatrist (who was better than most) didn't have time to truly ask me the right questions.

By the way, back in 2006, Philip posted information from the National Institute of Mental Health Website that these drugs help people 50% of the time and only reduce about 50% of the depressive symptoms. Not exactly a stellar success rate.

By the way, when I was on 4 meds, I thought they were helping. It wasn't until I started tapering that I realized how wrong I was.

Finally, the issue is not damming these drug but is about full disclosure. Please don't confuse the issues.

Most doctors (not all) are clueless about tapering their patients safely. They either cold turkey their patients or taper them way too quickly. If you think I am wrong, read the Paxil Progress Boards at http://www.paxilprogress.org and read people's posts. They aren't scientologists by the way.

Anyway, Laurie Yorke, who runs the boards, watched her son, Ryan, become homicial and suicidal while on Paxil. He never had a history of mental illness and is fine now that he is off the drug. After a doctor suggested tapering him from 50mg to 37gm, his behavior became even worse. She found he had knives and the anarchists's cookbook in his bedroom.

Laurie says that she easily could have been the father of the illionois shooter.

Posted by: AA at February 16, 2008 04:14 AM

What makes you say Elliott Smith was "appropriately treated"? He was on Paxil and killed himself in the identical way my daughter did, also on Paxil. Many of the people close to Elliott thought he had been murdered. The same thing happened here. Lots of these artists survive illegal drugs only to die at the hands of a prescription. As far as I'm concerned Paxil is never an "appropriate" treatment and is far more deadly (and toxic) than many people realize.

Posted by: Sara at February 16, 2008 12:34 PM

In Texas you can buy a gun the day you apply. But no one even checks at gun shows. I'm a licensed peace officer and I can state guns are not the issue. If you want a gun you can get one just like drugs. The problem I see are misapplication of the HIPPA laws

Posted by: Chaplain Dave Fair at February 18, 2008 09:20 AM

Illinois residents mourn now, America mourns, but who is really willing to make a difference about this? Are the pharmaceutical companies going to fund a multi million dollar study to see if the shooters med's cause rage or suicidal thoughts? Pharmaceuticals are for profit, and I intend to go the rest of my life without taking any prescription meds, there is always a natural solution. WZ

Posted by: Warren Zook at February 18, 2008 07:33 PM

We need to know what drugs the Mountain Dew shooter was taking until recently. Anybody who leaves eight cans of Mountain Dew, representing 71grams of sugar per 20 ounce container and an undisclosed number of empty Red Bull cans in a motel room is self-medicating as best they can;i.e., substituting one set of mood altering substances for the one they have abruptly halted. Non-compliance here, sure, but you throw in sugar mellitus diabetes and full-blown psychosis can't be far behind.

Give me a hunter in a duck blind over a sociology major with a six pack of Mountain Dew anyday...

Posted by: will at February 19, 2008 01:16 AM

Big pharma companies haven't taken the Oath to protect and "first do no harm" to patients.

Posted by: Stephany at February 19, 2008 04:33 PM