I still want to know why he started buying guns six months prior to all this.

None of us know this guy, and it's important to remember that unlikability is not a crucial part of a psych diagnosis, or at least it wouldn't be if psychiatry and psychology were really branches of medicine. There are plenty of likable happy folks out there who were slapped with psych labels in their teens, kids like the NIU shooter, accept that they successfully hide their labels and shirk the mental health system and their controlling family members and go on to lead happy, productive lives. Not all of these kids grow up to be mass murderers, but I still suspect that it's the entire experience of having parents send you to a pshrink for a label and invasive, humiliating counseling, coupled with drug therapy and confinement that creates these problems. All of the mass murderers had been in "counseling" as well as on meds at some point.

From Cho's mother admitting that when he was a child she slapped him because he wouldn't talk (had to you see, because he was biologically defective) to the NIU shooter's folks committing him for a year because he was unruly, it's the entire experience of having parents that buy into the "treatment" industry that can destroy. Not all of us are destroyed by it, some of us can and do speak out. In light of the tragedy, it's refreshing to see society noticing the causes and thus future preventions of these tragedies. I would imagine that the high suicide rate of middle aged men correlates with adolescent "treatment."

To point out the risk ratio and the following numbers are based on nothing other than the ease of multiplication.

IF you have 1 violent response out of a 100,000 users/withdrawal victims, you'll have 5 when its 500,000 . If we had a million users then violence would have about 10 public outbursts. If we have ten million users the number goes to 100. So over the years how many millions have been on it? Even if its 1 per million when you add up the millions over the years the numbers start to show a dangerous pattern. 99.99% being safe doesn't feel so good when you start to realize how high the number of that .01% are when applied across the shear volume of people using these drugs.

Not all examples of violent out burst are reported in the media. Two Nurses were stabbed with scissors in Gastonia, NC by a "mental patient" who then escaped. This really didn't make the news locally (2/21/08 if you wanna dig) and sure didn't make it nationally newsworthy but I'm left wonder how it should relate into the above stats. Surely not every violent outburst from med withdrawal leads to deaths and multiple newsworthy dates at that. Severe beatings are simple assault and battery and that is only police blotter statistic material. How many real reasons for assault are recorded and documented in the inpatient environment? How many times does the person accept blame and state what the shrinks want so they can get out. Argue and you'll be in longer. That doesn't include the shrink writing the notes up to reflect what they want and not what is real for the patient

Hit post too soon. I wanted to add in every one of these shooter cases people forget and spew venom at their families. It needs to be understood they also lost a child. They have far less support. For some reason people think they shouldn't grieve because its good their child/monster is dead or that the grievance isn't justified. People want to assume that people who do bad things had no positive qualities and they were always monsters every single day. Which is seldomly ever the case.

I'll believe the "psycho-gamer" excuse when they openly show the program menu on each of the computers and their shelves of game disks/boxes. Until then its just scare P.R. tactics by the police to give the press something to run with. ....Or does minesweeper cause players to go running around hunting for mines?

As a mental health counselor I am always suspicious of people that are too nice. Generally it disguises their anger. He has had a troubled past and seemed very lost. If you connect the dots, he left school for a prison guard job where someone "Mousy" (tatoo artist) would never cut it. He sold on ebay to make money and complained on Paypal sucks he was broke. His mom died four years ago and his dad moved far away. He was reaching out to a long lost god father for connection. He recently sought some bizaare tatoo's most nice guys do not wear. I read somewhere we he was being cut out of a reseach project. It is usually the anger of being marginzalized that sets off these guys. I bet there is a story out there about NIU dumping him on a research project because he was not involved enough and decided to show them. Overall, he has a long history of a troubled life and no anchor to tie himself too.

"All in all, however, I continue to think that the relationship between his behavior and meds isn't very strong."

I wish you could give us the reasons why you say this. What are your preconceived ideas of how meds influence behavior that you are bringing to the argument?

The above poster "sheshe" makes some very good points:
1. Overly nice – disguised anger
2. Mother died 4 years ago
3. Father (and mother) moved to Florida
4. Reaching out to godfather for connection
5. Tattoos depicting violence
6. Cut out of a research project

These points are all valid, but separate from the circumstances surrounding the medication. It seems that a strong argument can be made for multi-causation: sociological, psychological, and pharmacological.

Does anyone know, by the way, if he had any other siblings? All I’ve read is that he has a sister who is one year older.