It is not as if psychiatrists don't know.
The scientific research documenting the connection between violence, suicide and psychiatric drugs is overwhelming.
Perhaps most revealing is the statement by Candace B. Pert, Research Professor at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, as published in the October 20, 1997 issue of Time magazine. Professor Pert stated: I am alarmed at the monster that Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Solomon Snyder and I created when we discovered the simple binding assay for drug receptors 25 years ago....The public is being misinformed about the precision of these selective Serotonin-uptake inhibitors when the medical profession over-simplifies their action in the brain...7
Brief excerpts from some of the numerous studies documenting the violence/suicide connection follow:
(1) Testing revealed that Eric Harris, one of the dead suspects in the Columbine incident, had therapeutic levels of Luvox in his blood. On May 4, 1999, ABCs affiliate in Colorado reported that Luvox is the trade name for fluvoxamine, which research shows can induce mania. This is substantiated in an American Journal of Psychiatry article entitled Mania and Fluvoxamine which states the drug can induce mania in some persons when it is given at normal doses.
Additionally, a study by researchers at Hadassah-Hebrew University School of Medicine in Jerusalem, published in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy, concluded the following about Luvox: Our case series suggests that fluvoxamine may have the ability to induce or unmask manic behavior in depressed patients. Clinicians are alerted to monitor for this switching effect... 8
(2) A psychiatrist and drug expert states: According to the manufacturer, Solvay, 4% of children and youth taking Luvox developed mania during short-term controlled clinical trials. Mania is a psychosis which can produce bizarre, grandiose, highly elaborated destructive plans, including mass murder... 9
(3) The New York Post reported on January 31, 1999, that they had obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act showing that the New York Psychiatric Institute was testing Prozac on 6-year-olds. The psychiatric researchers own documents noted that Some patients have been reported to have an increase in suicidal thoughts and/or violent behavior. Another side effectwild manic episodeswas also acknowledged in the researchers records. 10
(4) A study conducted at Yale University School of Medicine and published in The Journal of The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in March, 1991, found that self-injurious ideation or behavior started or intensified during treatment with an antidepressant in six patients, ages 10 to 17, who were among 42 patients being studied. 11
(5) A study published in The Journal of Forensic Science in September, 1998, found that of 392 youth suicides in Paris between 1989 and 1996, 35% used to take psychoactive drugs. 12
(6) A 1995 Nordic conference reported that the new antidepressant drugs, in particular, have a stimulating amphetamine-like effect and consumers of these drugs can become aggressive or suffer hallucinations and/or suicidal thoughts. 13
(7) One Canadian research team which studied the effects of psychiatric drugs on prisoners found that violent, aggressive incidents occurred significantly more frequently in inmates who were on psychotropic (psychiatric or mind altering) medication than when these inmates were not on psychotropic drugs. [emphasis added] Inmates on major tranquilizers were shown to be more than twice as violent as they were when not taking psychiatric drugs. 14
(8) A paper published in The American Journal of Psychiatry in 1964 found that major tranquilizers (Thorazine, Haldol, Mellaril, etc.) can produce an acute psychotic reaction in an individual not previously psychotic.15 [emphasis added]
(9) In 1970, a textbook on the side effects of psychiatric drugs pointed out the potential for violence from these drugs stating, Indeed, even acts of violence such as murder and suicide have been attributed to the rage reactions induced by chlordiazepoxide (Librium) and diazepam (Valium). 16
(10) Valium was later replaced by Xanax as the most widely prescribed minor tranquilizer. According to a 1984 study of Xanax, Extreme anger and hostile behavior emerged from eight of the first 80 patients we treated with alprazolam (Xanax). 17
(11) A 1985 investigation into Xanax, reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry, said that 58 percent of the treated patients experienced serious dyscontrol, i.e., violence and loss of control compared with only eight percent who were given a placebo. 18
(12) A 1975 paper described a negative effect from the major tranquilizers called akathisia (from the Greek a meaning without or not and kathisia meaning sitting) that was first recognized as an inability of people taking the drugs to sit still comfortably. 19
(13) In his paper, The Many Faces of Akathisia, researcher Theodore Van Putten reported nearly half of the 110 persons in the study had experienced akathisia. He described what happened to these people after taking the drugs. One woman started to bang her head against the wall three days after an injection of a major tranquilizer. Another who had been given these drugs for five days experienced an upsurge in hallucinations, screaming, even more bizarre thinking, aggressive and also self-destructive outbursts, and agitated pacing or dancing, while still another stated that while on the drug she felt hostile, hated everybody and heard voices taunting her. 20
(14) Dr. William Wirshing, a psychiatrist at UCLA, reported at the American Psychiatric Associations 1991 annual meeting that five patients appeared to have developed akathisia from Prozac. Dr. Wirshing believed the akathisia had led them all to contemplate suicide. 21
(15) In 1986, a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that patients taking the drug Elavil, an antidepressant, ...appeared progressively more hostile, irritable, and behaviorally impulsive....The increase in demanding behavior and assaultive acts was statistically significant. 22
(16) A study of children taking Elavil published in Psychosomatics in 1980, found that some grew hysterical or hostile. One of the kids began exhibiting excessive irritability and anger, pacing excessively and declaring that he was not afraid anymore, that he was not chicken anymore. 23
(17) Another article published in the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry in 1985 described five cases of extreme acts of physical violence due to akathisia caused by Haldol. These cases included acts of extreme, senseless, bizarre and brutal violence. 24
The argument is sometimes made that acts of violence occur because the individual was not taking his/her medication. This is a red herring forwarded in the media by psychiatric interests to take attention off the drugs as a creator of violence. It is the drugs themselves that create these states. Several studies illustrate this point.
(18) In February of 1990, Dr. Marvin Teicher, a Harvard psychiatrist, reported in The American Journal of Psychiatry that six patients, who were depressed, but not suicidal, had developed intense, violent, suicidal preoccupation within weeks of taking Prozac. 25
Subsequent letters from doctors published in The American Journal of Psychiatry and The New England Journal of Medicine reported similar findings. The New England Journal of Medicine report noted that patients had not been suicidal before taking the drug and that their suicidal thoughts ended abruptly upon ceasing its use. 26
(19) In 1995, nine Australian psychiatrists urged SSRIs be sold with a warning after patients had slashed themselves or become preoccupied with violence when taking them. I didnt want to die, I just felt like tearing my flesh to pieces, one patient told them. Another said, I got my cane cutters knife in my right hand and wanted to cut my left hand off at the wrist. The self destructive harm started after the treatment began or doses increased, and eased or ceased when the drugs were stopped. 27
(20) A 1988 study documented the tendency of the major tranquilizer Haldol to increase hostile and violent behavior. According to the study, many persons who had no history of violence prior to being placed on the drug were significantly more violent on haloperidol (Haldol). In this study, the researchers attributed the marked increase in violence to akathisia. 28
(21) A report published in The Journal of the American Medical Association exemplified the agitation which can accompany akathisia. Describing a man who had started taking Haldol four days previously, the researcher noted that the man ...became uncontrollably agitated, could not sit still, and paced for several hours. [emphasis added] After complaining of violent urges to assault anyone near him, the man assaulted and tried to kill his dog. 29
Another little known fact is that withdrawal from psychiatric drugs can turn people horrifically violent. The fact that these drugs can create this effect can be obscured because frequently after a violent crime has been committed, psychiatrists or their allied organizations such as the pharmaceutical company-funded National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), blame the offending persons violent behavior on his failure to continue his medication. However, the truth is that extreme violence is a documented side-effect of withdrawal from psychiatric drugs.
(22) In 1995, a Danish medical study reported the following withdrawal symptoms from psychotropic drug dependence: Emotional changes: Fear, terror, panic, fear of insanity, failing self-confidence, restlessness, irritability, aggression, an urge to destroy and, in the worst cases, an urge to kill. 30
(23) In 1996, the National Preferred Medicines Center Inc., comprised of New Zealand physicians, issued a report on Acute Drug Withdrawal, saying that withdrawal from psychoactive drugs can cause 1) rebound effects that exacerbate previous symptoms of a disease, and 2) new symptoms unrelated to the condition that had not been previously experienced by the patient. The antidepressants can create agitation, severe depression, hallucinations, aggressiveness, hypomania and akathisia. 31
Janet, a teenager who was prescribed minor tranquilizers and antidepressants, said that while withdrawing from these drugs, she had violent thoughts and had to restrain her aggressiveness, including wanting to stab anyone who withheld the decreasing drug dosage from her: I had absolutely no history of violence. These new feelings were not part of the so-called mental illness I was suppose to have; I had never been aggressive before being prescribed the drugs. Once safely and gradually withdrawn from them, I never experienced uncontrollable violent urges again. 32
As noted earlier, even the APA euphemistically admits in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that the major complication of withdrawal from Ritalin, a psychiatric drug currently being administered to millions of children, is suicide.
Withdrawal effects from these drugs can be severe and take intense medical supervision to ensure the person safely detoxes. As an example, Stevie Nicks, of the rock group Fleetwood Mac, talks about the intense difficulty of detoxing from psychiatric drugs: I'm the one who realized that thats what was killing me [the psychiatric drug, Klonopin]. It took her 45 days to withdraw from the Klonopin. I was in there sick for 45 days, really, really sick. And I watched generations of drug addicts come in and go out. You know, the heroin people, 12 days...and they're gone. And I'm still just there. 33
Viewed against this research and the dramatic increase in the use of mind-altering drugs by children and adults alike, the cause for the rise of senseless violence becomes all too clear.
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