A man who went on a shooting spree at the University of Pittsburgh medical center last week was found to have prescriptions for 43 different psychiatric and physical medications. The over medication of America and it’s relation to violence is a subject that has been crying out for further, in depth, study. There have been outcries on this since the 1990′s, but the main stream media seems to have little interest in the connection between psychiatric medications and violent or suicidal behavior.
Almost all of the “school shooters” in recent years were now known to have been taking psychiatric drugs. There is definitely a connection, but as far as we can tell, there has been no definitive answer to the chicken or the egg nature of this problem. Are people (especially younger people) driven to violence by the drugs, or are these violent young people with obvious problems that required drugs? It’s not a mystery that anti depressants can cause suicidal and violent behavior, there have been FDA black box warnings on these drugs since 2004 (only because the public pushed the FDA). What is still an open question is whether we are helping or hurting with the escalated drugging of America. One data point recently infers that the black box warning in 2004 caused suicides to rise as people cut back on giving kids antidepressants for a time. We need to solve this riddle, and stop the indiscriminate drugging of our children until it’s solved.
Don’t look to the drug companies for answers, they have already hand their hands caught in the cookie jar, of collusion and conflicts of interest, in promoting these kinds of medications. There will have to be another grass roots push on this question and maybe investigations instituted by our government.
