Prescription For Violence: The Corresponding Rise Of Antidepressants, SSRIs & Mass Shootings
BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 7 months ago
Alex at Ammo.com sent this article my way, and I haven’t ignored it. I had to ponder it a bit before weighing in.
Regardless if depression is overdiagnosed and America has a habit of over-prescribing mind-altering medications, there’s little doubt that SSRIs have a risk of increasing violence in patients, even in patients who have no previous history of violence or aggression before taking the medication.
This risk of violent behavior, both to the individual taking the medication and those around them, is so significant, it has led to the FDA mandating a black box warning on all SSRI medications. These black box warnings are designed to provide information and draw attention to the fact that the medication has serious and life-threatening risks.
As of 2004, all antidepressants in the U.S. are labeled:
“Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia, hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric.”
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Some of the side effects caused by SSRIs can increase the risk of violence against others. Perhaps the most risky, emotional blunting (or detachment) has been linked to SSRI use and many people who’ve taken the drugs report “not feeling” or “not caring” about anything. There’s also been an established causal relationship between SSRI use and psychosis and hallucinations, both of which are known to increase the risk of violence in individuals.
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In most cases, the vast majority of people who suffer from mental illness are nonviolent. Even those who self-harm are highly unlikely to hurt others. In fact, these individuals are more likely to become victims of violent crimes than the general public.
Yet after each mass shooting tragedy, the media fills with psychiatrists who say that the individual didn’t seek the help they needed and that with the proper treatment, the tragedy may have been prevented. But research doesn’t support that philosophy.
In fact, depression in particular doesn’t lead to violence, yet since the increase in SSRI antidepressants being widely prescribed, the rise in mass shootings has increased right along with it. And evidence shows that many mass shooters were either taking or had recently taken SSRIs.
He gives a number of examples, and the number of examples he gives isn’t trivial. So the initial reaction to all of this could be, “Well, if SSRIs can cause violence behavior, then put them on a list and prevent them from purchasing guns.”
But lists are exactly what the controllers want, and even more to the point, it’s exactly what the controllers want the soccer moms to admit that we need. And the only ones who could manage such a list? Why, it would be FedGov. Presto. More power for the controllers, and after the soccer moms admit that lists are needful, it’s a simple thing to keep adding to that list.
I am not asserting that there is no danger in SSRIs. Anything that powerful to affect your psyche must be managed properly. And there is no doubt that such things are over-prescribed today by doctors in America. The flip side of the coin is that such medications do help with pain management, and there are certainly patients who do okay with them – for a while.
Other than pain management, I see this as a reflection of the depression not of individuals, but an entire society which has rejected God, His holy law for our lives, and the saving grace bestowed in His only Son. My former (and now decreased) professor, Dr. C. Gregg Singer, wrote in the preface of his book “From Rationalism to Irrationality,” that the west is sick unto death. That was decades ago.
The society reflects its individuals, and individuals make the society. The world and life view of modernism has led us to where we are today, and lists won’t be of any help getting us back. Lists will help the controllers be more controlling, and we all know about mass shootings on behalf of the state and what that did to the world in the twentieth century (170,000,000 dead).
As for what to do, if someone calls for lists, its as out of balance as our society is. God’s economy is three-pronged: the state, the church, and the family. None are supposed to be subservient to the other. The solution lies in something other than lists, and thus I’m where David Codrea is on this: “Anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian.”
Exactly what form that takes is another discussion, but a ban-list for guns for some SSRI patients isn’t nearly enough, as they can always go to the local tractor supply for several loads of fertilizer. And that doesn’t help the SSRI patients who do okay on the medications one whit.
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On May 21, 2019 at 7:08 am, Jack said:
We don’t understand what causes depression. And we don’t have readily available diagnostics that can pinpoint which antidepressant will help a specific individual. There’s no blood test, urine test, saliva test, DNA test, or questionnaire that can us use prozac or lexapro or effexor or wellbutrin.
So the current protocol is to prescribe a dosage of a particular med based on medical and family history, body weight, and other factors, and observe the effects after 3-4 weeks.
While it’s trial and error and not very scientific, it’s all we have at the moment. And it has helped millions of people overcome very debilitating depression.
After 4 miscarriages in a row over about 18 months, my wife became extremely suicidal. When she told me that the only thing that kept her alive was the unconditional love of our dog I was finally able to get her to see a doctor.
She was diagnosed with both depression and ADD, and was prescribed fluoxetine (prozac). This did nothing for her, so she switched to effexor. Her reaction was like someone switched on the lights. Within two weeks, she was getting better. Within a month she was no longer suicidal, and within three months had found a new job.
A few years later, she started to get panic attacks at work. She was prescribed escitalopram (Lexapro) which is supposed to be an anti-anxiety med. Unfortunately, it made the panic attacks worse, so she threw it away.
She’s been on effexor for almost 20 years. In the last few years, with a move across the country and a new doctor, my wife has slowly transitioned from effexor to bupropion (Wellbutrin), which has greatly improved our sex life (a diminished sex drive is a side effect of many antidepressants, but I’d much rather have a poor sex life with my wife than to be a widower).
Many many millions of people have been helped by the variety of antidepressants.
It is important to understand that SSRIs are a subclass of antidepressants.
When the FDA decide to approve a treatment (device or pharmaceutical), the three primary questions they ask are:
1) is it safe
2) is it effective
3) do the benefits outweigh the risks
Even for SSRIs, the benefits outweigh the risks, and they remain an approved class of drugs — with warnings.
Penalizing all who benefit from antidepressants, or even SSRIs, because of the risk of a few, is the same logic as penalizing all gun owners because of the behavior of the few criminals.
On May 21, 2019 at 9:41 am, Fred said:
” I see this as a reflection of the depression not of individuals, but an entire society which has rejected God, His holy law for our lives, and the saving grace bestowed in His only Son.”
I’ve thought much about this. There is a deep structural problem with society in America. Another list of it’s ills isn’t needed. And it’s easy for me to rant against the devil and his anti-Christs but I’ve had the notion to explain from the bible, in terms anybody can understand the needs of men and women and how ‘safety’ and ‘control’ destroys civilizational foundations and creates a powder keg of pent up energy, frustration, and anger. Some children need to get hurt riding home made go carts so that all the children learn risk. Outlawing go carts, as an example, harms the children more than the broken arms or even the death of one of them. Removing risk doesn’t remove the risk, in pins it down only for it to explode outward taking all of society with it. When all are safe, kept in a controlled bubble, none are safe, all are criminals and outlaws, it’s merely a matter of time before somebody burns it all down and weirdly, it’s usually the governments that created the safety thereby increasing this risk that ends up doing the burning. The Godless truly are blind.
Have you ever noticed how nothing about shopping is illegal? Work and shop, oh and take your SSRI’s. Shopping nor SSRI’s are an adequate replacement for the anthropological, physiological, and ‘psychological’ needs of humans. The boys on SSRI’s need to be lead, by men, taught to take risk not to avoid it. Horace Mann’s Prussian school model isn’t right. Sitting in a classroom, pent up, and being a good little girl doesn’t work for boys, and some boys NEED to build, create, fight, destroy and find their place in the tribal hierarchy. Forced compliance causes the same pent up aggression that societies in general feel when made to be safe. Boys need a mission, a tribal mission of which they can be an integral part to learn leadership, cooperation, the reward of finishing a task as a team and that subsequent camaraderie. Sit down and shut up, is not how you raise men. And when everything is illegal and there is no outlet, no course to pursue in becoming a man, no wonder most of the young men in America are dropping out of society, there is no society in which to find ones place and make some meaningful contribution(s). The message to boys is clear; We don’t need you, is what they’ve been told, so here take these drugs to help you adjust to acting like a good little girl with the hope that one day you will be a ‘well adjusted’ compliant little worker and shopper? Burn it all down indeed.
If these boys had been allowed to beat up the kids that needed it or get beat up themselves these shootings wouldn’t happen. I know, that’s a bold claim, and I stand by it! There is a Natural Law, there is hierarchical structure, men are built. They cannot find for whom, or how, or where they will serve, and all men serve, if they can’t find their place in the structure that exists by God. That many children will have to submit to other children, as bad as we feel for them, like a broken arm riding a go cart, it’s good that all learn how and where they fit.
Anyway, the point is that the answer lies in Proverbs. How to extract it and apply it is my challenge. Men and women have needs that must be met, yay, will be met. It is the devil that would deny these and attempt to change the order and structure. how to explain this? God’s Natural and Revealed Law is the answer, not mind and mood altering substances to help cope with submitting to the structure that the devil would have us.
And Herschel, I would use the terms Nation or Tribe, instead of State, and would not use the word country either in your triune structure that includes church and family, but that’s just me.
On May 21, 2019 at 9:56 am, Fred said:
And, depression, true depression is had by maybe 3 or 4 percent of any population. Recently, a study found that half of all American women were on some form of mind or mood altering substance. Treating repression, of God’s gifts or primal needs as depression is why the meds don’t work. Telling women to go to college, get a job, have 3 abortions and live alone at 30 with your dog is a lie of the devil and repression of God’s created order. Telling boys to sit down and shut up and act like a quiet little girl is not depression, it’s repression of God’s created order. Know the difference. Both of these are telling girls to be boys and boys to be girls, no wonder the sex change industry is thriving, it’s just a matter of time before the devil tells them to go ahead and mutilate their genitals, after all your not a man or a woman. These are not depression, these are repression. The answer lies in the book of Proverbs.
On May 21, 2019 at 12:50 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Fred
“I’ve had the notion to explain from the bible, in terms anybody can understand the needs of men and women and how ‘safety’ and ‘control’ destroys civilizational foundations and creates a powder keg of pent up energy, frustration, and anger. Some children need to get hurt riding home made go carts so that all the children learn risk. Outlawing go carts, as an example, harms the children more than the broken arms or even the death of one of them. Removing risk doesn’t remove the risk, in pins it down only for it to explode outward taking all of society with it. ”
I wish our so-called leaders could be as wise as you are in that statement.
Whether we like it or not, living is a contact sport and no one gets out of this life alive. A subtle shift has occurred over my lifetime concerning how people live and what they expect out of it.
In the old days (say prior to 1945), people expected life to be tough – they expected to have to shed sweat, tears and sometimes blood to continue to survive or maybe even thrive. Even then, there were no guarantees. Men sometimes didn’t make it home from their dangerous jobs; mothers sometimes did not survive childbirth; children sometimes died of diseases for which there was no cure.
To the extent people thought about or interacted with government in daily life, they expected it to safeguard their liberties and otherwise get out of the way.
We were a God-fearing people in those days – all Americans, certainly – but we certainly were in comparison to the present day.
Contrast that America, now gone, with that of present. Today, Americans don’t want to work, or be saved, or educated; they want to be safe and they want to be entertained.
The pervasiveness of “safety first” thinking in government and society is so obvious now that there’s even a term for it – the nanny state. It is appropriate that it has been so named in a feminine manner, because the nanny state is largely a by-product of women’s political ascent since the 1920s.
In fact, one could call it the culmination of that rise. Why? Because – while there are exceptions (women who value liberty over safety) – the majority of women tend to prefer safety to liberty, security to risk, bureaucratic paternalism to limited government.
Quite accurately, it has been said that women have “divorced” their men and, metaphorically-speaking, married the government.
The nanny state serves the interests of the statists and others who desire an all-powerful, all-intrusive government, since independent, self-reliant and courageous people – men and women alike – have little need for what they offer.
The secularization of our society serves the same ends: When people reject God, the void in their lives does not long-remain empty, but is instead filled with some sort of substitute. In the case of many leftists, that substitute is the worship of government. Chesterton was correct when he said:
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” ― G.K. Chesterton
On May 21, 2019 at 12:52 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “We were a God-fearing people in those days – all Americans, certainly – but we certainly were in comparison to the present day.”
Should read “We were a God-fearing people in those days – not all Americans, certainly – but we certainly were in comparison to the present day.”
Apologies for the typo…
On May 21, 2019 at 7:58 pm, dad29 said:
I see this as a reflection of the depression not of individuals, but an entire society which has rejected God, His holy law for our lives, and the saving grace bestowed in His only Son.
On THIS we agree 100%. Culture follows cult, and the cult in the US since about 1950 (maybe before by a few years) has been the Cult of Money. And money has no morals.