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Article on psychoactive medications and mass murder
It's here.
We do have to recognize a few things here:
1. The causation may be inverted. Mass killers tend to be seriously mentally messed up, so it would be foreseeable that most of them would be on medication. With millions of people taking one drug or another, the odds of mass killers falling among that group is going to be quite high. We might be more surprised to find a mass killer who *wasn't* on medication.
2. In most cases, the medication works as intended. But in a minority of cases it has psychatric side-effects. It can take a bipolar who is depressive right now and flip him to manic. Also a person may be so deeply depressed that they are unable to act. Even suicide requires a decision, and in that state would represent hope, and the person is so deeply depressed that they can't act and can't even think of hope. At some stages in their return, they may pass thru a belt where they are able to act, and still depressed enough to want to kill themselves (or others). And there are problem areas, such as the risk that Ritalin, if given to a bipolar, can push them into psychosis. A psychiatrist is likely to be alert to these matters, but GP may not be. (I note that one of the killers in the article was receiving Valium, which GPs sometimes use as a general-purpose psychoactive medication, even tho it's a muscle relaxant with incidental calming effects).
The person's treatment has to be monitored with alertness to these risks. A small minority of cases still represents a significant number when millions of people are involved. A 1% risk equals tens of thousands of cases, so even a fraction of one percent is a serious risk to the public.
3. The details also show the problems of government health care. When Medicare or other government sources fund the treatment, they often require prescription of older generations of medicines, which have more risk of side-effects than newer ones. The name of the game is keep health care costs down, and the agencies who pay for the results of the side-effects (local courts and agencies funding care for the committed) don't go into the equation because it's somebody else's budget.
[Hat tip to reader The Mechanic]
4 Comments
I would read "The Key to the Sciences of Man" by D.G. Garan. You can find it in most college libraries, but it has been out of print for some time. Garan seems to have a much better grasp of psychology than most experts today. While wonderful for acute problems, the medical model appears to be inadequate for understanding chronic conditions, both physical and mental.
The other year I represented a fellow charged with major assault. He had been prescribed an anti depressant and was charged with committing a major assault.
The drug had shifted his mood from depressed to a manic.
His local Doctor had prescribed the medication and then provided inadequate monitoring and follow up.
A Psychiatrist I discussed this medication with commented that just about all anti depressants have the capacity to do this and she stressed the need for ongoing monitoring of patient mood.
Hands down, Apple's app store wins by a mile. It's a huge selection of all sorts of apps vs a rather sad selection of a handful for Zune. Microsoft has plans, especially in the realm of games, but I'm not sure I'd want to bet on the future if this aspect is important to you. The iPod is a much better choice in that case.
I would question many of the facts presented in that article... the TeenScreenTruth.com website the author referenced is run by a front group for the Church of Scientology.