The knee-jerk proclamation of journalists stating violent behavior is the result of “insufficient mental health care” is based on junk science, with absolutely no evidence to back it up.
Even Psychology Today admits the evidence for psychiatric medications being the cause of much violent behavior. The FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System by Thomas Moore, Joseph Glenmullen and Curt Furberg found that “adverse events” are without a doubt connected to the use of antidepressants and other psychotropic meds.
In the Jan 25, 2011 issue of Psychology Today writer Robert Whitaker states:
“To do their study, Moore and his collaborators extracted all serious events reports from the FDA’s database from 2004 through September 2009, and then identified 484 drugs that had triggered at least 200 case reports of serious adverse events (of any type) during that 69-month period. They then investigated to see if any of these 484 drugs had a “disproportionate” association with violence. They identified 31 such drugs, out of the 484, that met this criteria.”
The drugs under question were a smoking cessation drug (varenicline), 11 antidepressants, 6 hypnotic/sedatives and 3 drugs used to treat ADHD. Of these drugs, 572 cases of violence were associated with antidepressants. The ADHD drugs accounted for 108 such incidents, and the hypnotic sedatives were found responsible for 97 cases of violence.
Of the total case reports of violence (1,937) there were 387 homicides, 404 physical assaults, 27 who committed some type of violent abuse, plus 896 reports of those with homicidal ideation (the capacity for or the act of forming or entertaining ideas – Mirriam Webster online dictionary).
Mr. Whitaker states in the same Psychology Today article that “In light of this finding, the many past shootings at school campuses and other public venues should perhaps be investigated anew by government officials, with an eye toward ascertaining whether psychotropic use may have, in the manner of an adverse event, triggered that violence.”
The outrageous truth is that the mental health community is well aware of the connection between their medications and violent behavior. It is hard to believe that not only do they continue to prescribe these dangerous drugs, but they proclaim, via their mouth pieces (most news outlets) that those who exhibit violent behavior should get even more mental health treatment.
The idea that the government should investigate these psychotropic drug induced incidents of violence should be shouted from the rooftops; it has to go beyond a gentle suggestion in a back issue of Psychology Today, read by few.
The families who have lost children or adult family members in violent school or workplace incidents deserve no less than a full investigation of both the drugs responsible and the cover up by pharmaceutical companies that continues to this day.
Without a public outcry there will be no reason for pharmaceutical giants to stop producing these drugs. Evidently it is too much to expect their CEO’s to have a conscience which overrides a threat of profit loss.