Reports of Gunman’s Use of Antidepressant Renew Debate Over Side Effects:
This is a great article from the NY Times (which is rare) about what kind of role antidepressants played in the NIU tragedy.
In a word, they probably played no role whatsoever.
Kazmierczak was on Prozac and was off of it for three days prior to the shooting. According to the article, Prozac doesn’t leave your system in that time.
Now, the anti-depressant Luddites will still use this as an argument because they can’t make up their minds if being on or off antidepressants causes situations like this.
Most medical professionals quoted in the article say that when patients on antidepressants have violent outbursts like this, it usually indicates another underlying problem.
And I’m sure they’ll also ignore this quote.
Dr. Michael Stone, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia, maintains a database of 1,000 violent crimes, including mass murders, going back decades. In many cases the accused had stopped taking drugs for schizophrenia, Dr. Stone said.
“I only have a handful of cases,” he added, “where the person was on an antidepressant.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if Kazmierczak had undiagnosed schizophrenia.
Personally, I couldn’t laud the benefits of antidepressants enough. Being on one has literally saved my life.
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