Mass Murder and SSRIs - There is a push to brand the link as a "conspiracy"

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Are SSRIs the main cause of the rise in mass killings?

  • Yes

  • No

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Akira Fudo

Akira Fudo

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Sep 28, 2020
2022 has been a blood soaked year to say the least. Just in America alone there have been over 3 high profile mass shootings since April, but it isn't just burgers that are going AWOL, the super duper progressive and gun free Scandinavian paradises have had 2 mass shootings this summer as well, one in Norway and the other in Denmark.

I decided to create this thread because I feel that mass murders are a big issue we've allowed to fester because we've spent over 30 years arguing the same things; guns this, mental health that. One thing that has never been looked into by the federal government however is the link between SSRIs and murder. There are little murmurs and whispers of this topic after such events, but trusty fact checkers have recently been coming out of the woodwork to stop the spread of such dangerous information!


I'll spare a few paragraphs to offer rebuttals to people who write off the link between SSRIs and mass murder as dubious.

But the majority of people who take SSRIs are women, why don't you see any female mass shooters?

 Because all across the globe it is men who commit the overwhelming majority of violent crimes (4/5ths on average) there's also the fact that there are innate biological differences between a female brain and a male brain and there isn't much studies on how antidepressants effect each sex.

X country has a higher rate of antidepressant consumption than the US yet we have more mass shootings!

Moot point considering that there are clear differences in demographics of the people taking those antidepressants. America currently has the highest percentage of young men who take SSRIs and are prescribed them at much younger ages than others.

I've been taking X medication for X years now and have never though about killing anyone!

Good for you. Yes, there are people with legitimate issues that are helped with pills, there's no doubt, but there's also no doubt that those same pills have FDA black box warnings that list risk of suicide and violence as potential side effects. Let's run the numbers:

There are approximately 330,000,000 people in America with 13% taking antidepressants, meaning there are 42,900,000 Americans taking antidepressants. Even if only 1% of those 42,900,000 were to experience homicidal thoughts as a result of the pills that would leave 429,000 potential mass murderers roaming our country every day. Even more concerning is the literature that finds a scientific link SSRI usage to an increased risk in violent behavior. The European Medicines Agency published research in 2005 revealing that participants on SSRIs showed an increase in suicidality and aggression compared to those on a placebo, odds ratio 2.79


And let's not of course forget the list of mass shooters who were either taking or withdrawing from SSRIs:

Eric Harris (Prozac)
Jeffrey Weis (Prozac)
Aaron Alexis (Trazadone)
James Holmes (Zoloft)
Adam Lanza (Celexa and controversial drug FanApt)
Dylan Roof (Zoloft)
Stephen Paddock (Valium)

And it's not even only shootings these drugs are involved in. There's the case of Andrea Yates who was on Effexor and Remeron when she killed her 5 children. Previously she was on Wellbutrin.

There's also Andreas Lubitz, a Germanwings pilot taking large amounts of citalopram, zoplclone, and mirtazapine who purposely crashed into the French Alps killing himself and all 149 passengers and crew.

Returning to the topic of shootings, the Copenhagen mall shooter also uploaded videos complaining about how antipsychotics don't help.

It should also be noted that Omar Mateen, the perpetrator of the Pulse Nightclub shooting revealed to a coworker that he was tired from looking up antidepressants all night and was afraid he had slipped into psychosis before the shooting. The FBI told him not to reveal that info to the media after the shooting, only revealing it later.

A good website to find these stories is SSRI Stories:

(Stay away from CCHR, they're run by scientologists.)

So why all this secrecy when it comes to what drugs a suspect in a mass casualty event was taking? Well it has everything to do with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) signed by Bill Clinton. Basically it means that the government can keep whatever pills a suspect in a violent crimes was taking a secret, under the guise of privacy.

In conclusion the issue we face with SSRIs might as well be another case of Americans' public health and safety being jeopardized for profits at the hands of evil corporations and corrupt politicians. Big Pharma already created the Opioid Crisis so it's easy to assume something similar is going on; requirements for prescription drugs being loosened to allow clinics to hand them out to candy, a lot of the time to people who don't even need them. Big Pharma fried a whole generation of kids' brain with their Ritalin campaign during the 2000s, so who knows how much damage has already been done?
 
DaddyDickDown said:
fucked up people get prescribed drugs for fucked up people
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Good thing they only prescribe them to people who are fucked-up rather than trying to convince us that literally everybody is mentally ill.

It's great that we have these medications so that people are becoming more sane and not exponentially more deranged with each passing year.
 
One thing that has never been looked into by the federal government
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Well not openly. Who knows what shit is a result of their research? I'm pretty sure they know. If you want to take guns, it helps to have more mass murder.


To play devil's advocate, the selection bias with these things is pretty significant, where people with serious mental issues are both more likely to take SSRI's and to commit mass murder.
 
DaddyDickDown said:
fucked up people get prescribed drugs for fucked up people
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nah it's ridiculously easy to get prescriptions for psych drugs as a normal person
mental problems are overdiagnosed to a ridiculous degree, basically if you ever have any kind of difficulty in your life, you can probably leverage it into a depression diagnosis and collect ssri pills by the truckload
 
Psychiatry is a goddamn crap shoot. There is no test that shows a person is depressed or mentally ill and needs SSRIs or what effect a drug will have on them. They just try to use whatever they can and hope it helps. That’s basically like going to a casino and hoping to win the jackpot.

Messing with a person’s neurochemistry is very dangerous and so many are reliant on these drugs now that it isn’t a real surprise one of them is going to go nuts. Hell I know people who have gone on SSRIs and change completely from who they were. While those who are suffering can see benefit from them they are really overprescribed over doctors suggesting other means to curb depression and mental issues like lifestyle changes and therapy.
 
No. Most problems with mass murder and insane people can be directly attributed to social breakdown and the mass closure of asylums, among other things.

SSRIs are handed out like candy, it’s likely just a coincidence when someone was using them due to the sheer number of people on them, a lot of who were already disturbed before being given them. A crazy person on an SSRI is still crazy underneath the medication. There’s a major selection bias going on.

Anyway sertraline changed my life for the better, so I’ll defend it in particular any day.
 
TheSockiestSock said:
Psychiatry is a goddamn crap shoot. There is no test that shows a person is depressed or mentally ill and needs SSRIs or what effect a drug will have on them. They just try to use whatever they can and hope it helps. That’s basically like going to a casino and hoping to win the jackpot.

Messing with a person’s neurochemistry is very dangerous and so many are reliant on these drugs now that it isn’t a real surprise one of them is going to go nuts. Hell I know people who have gone on SSRIs and change completely from who they were. While those who are suffering can see benefit from them they are really overprescribed over doctors suggesting other means to curb depression and mental issues like lifestyle changes and therapy.
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I too have had a friend completely change on antidepressants to the point where I no longer keep contact with him.

The criteria for an anxiety or depression diagnosis is so vague and doesn't even factor in genetics or actual brain chemistry. The fact that "situational depression" is treated as an illness is so ridiculous.
 
Could be genetic in part which is interesting. Someone did a case study including interviews and genetic screening of individuals who committed murder after starting antidepressants. Mutated CYP450 genes were a factor as were reports of akathisia or restlessness experienced due to antidepressant use.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3513220/

The full article is worth reading if only because it's a rarity in biomedical science: they get detailed on case histories and the interview snippets are fascinating.

However, this is the best part of the paper:
It is the authors’ contention that prescribing antidepressants without knowing about CYP450 genotypes is like giving blood transfusions without matching for ABO groups. Similarly, it is essential that other drugs in a patient’s drug regimen be understood in terms of interacting with CYP450 enzymes as substrates, inducers, or inhibitors.
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Socially responsible scientists, God bless them.
 
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>have kid with a developing brain
>he's sad
>don't wonder why he's sad, give him drugs
>keep giving him different drugs until he looks less sad
>kid has drugs fuck his brain up
>kid goes crazy and tries to kill what he thinks makes him sad

I've been put on SSRIs as a kid, they fucking suck. It's like everything is grey, but as long as you stopped looking like a problem teachers and shitty parents don't care.
 
Also yes drugs like sertaline can help people but it has to be drilled into people that EVERY BRAIN IS DIFFERENT. What helps one person can send another over the edge and no one knows what effect a drug will have until they use it.
 
The people who blame Day Care make more sense.
 
I honestly think mass murders are the absolute least of the severe problems SSRIs and overmedication are causing our society.
 
DumbDude42 said:
nah it's ridiculously easy to get prescriptions for psych drugs as a normal person
mental problems are overdiagnosed to a ridiculous degree, basically if you ever have any kind of difficulty in your life, you can probably leverage it into a depression diagnosis and collect ssri pills by the truckload
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"I'm anxious and heard SSRIs help with that" That's literally all it takes
 
It's not some secret that SSRI's can cause suicidal ideation and similar negative mental health issues. But it seems a stretch to say they're the "main cause" of mass killings. The issue is incredibly complex and I don't think there's any one cause for it, and the issues themselves are often super intertwined.
 
The black box warning for suicide on SSRIs is a result mainly of two things that they cause in many people: activation and agitation. If they cause these things in someone whose severely depressed thinking has not otherwise been addressed, it can be the catalyst for suicide. Basically, it lets them have the energy they need to act on the thoughts they had all along, and it provides additional motive in some cases by causing an unbearable pathological restlessness called akathisia. Akathisia can also bring severe irritability which is another factor.

The other thing SSRIs can do is activate underlying tendencies to become manic. These are genetic and inborn and often not known until unmasked. Not all mania is spending sprees and promiscuous sex- there are also mixed manias where the dark thoughts of depression and running concurrently with the manic lack of sleep or judgment.

You can see how all these factors could push someone over the edge to homicide. But they are not magic potions. They don't work that much better than placebo to treat depression, and neither are they evil elixirs that would turn a good man into a fiend. What they can be is a match to gasoline. But the patient has to already have the gasoline. That is, he has to be already predisposed in character and psychology to commit murder for some reason.
 
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