[back] Virginia Tech  School shootings and psychiatric drugs

[April 18, 2007] Are antidepressant drugs an accomplice in the Virginia Tech shootings? (opinion) 

by Mike Adams

http://www.newstarget.com/021798.html

The Chicago Tribune reports that Cho Seung Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter
who killed 32 fellow students in a shooting rampage, was taking
antidepressant drugs. This is not the first time a school shooting rampage
has been linked to antidepressants. The infamous Colombine High shootings
took place almost exactly eight years ago, and the shooters in that rampage
were also -- you guessed it -- taking antidepressant drugs.

What is it about antidepressant drugs that provokes young men to pick up
pistols, rifles and shotguns, then violently assault their classmates?
Clearly, there's something wrong with the mind of anyone who engages in such
violent acts. Could the drugs be "imbalancing" their minds, priming them for
violence?

The answer is a very sobering, "Yes, they could be." As we reported in a
previous NewsTarget article on Paxil:

Researchers from Cardiff University in Britain and the Cochrane Centre
examined data on Paxil -- or its generic form, paroxetine -- from
GlaxoSmithKline, legal cases and emails from nearly 1,400 patients who
responded to a British TV program on antidepressants. The researchers found
that 60 out of 9,219 people taking Paxil -- 0.65 percent -- experienced a
"hostility event," compared to 20 out of 6,455 patients taking placebo, or
0.31 percent.

In that same article, published in September, 2006, I stated, "This finding
helps explain why school shootings are almost always conducted by children
who are taking antidepressants. We also know that SSRIs cause children to
disconnect from reality. When you combine that with a propensity for
violence, you create a dangerous recipe for school shootings and other
adolescent violence."

Sadly, that explanation rings true once again with the Virginia Tech
shooting. Wherever we see school violence, antidepressant drugs seem to
found at the scene of the crime. The correlation is not coincidence. There
is a causal link between the two.