Meds played little to no role in NIU shooting

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 at 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.

Comments

One response to “Meds played little to no role in NIU shooting”

  1. Endersdragon Avatar
    Endersdragon

    My personal thoughts about anti-depressents are yes they can be life-savers, yes they can help out. But under no circumstances should a kid (or even an adult) ever be on them without seeing a shrink on a regular basis to make sure they are working with no ill effects. Sadly, this is too often what will happen, extended therapy is just too expensive I guess (I know my insurance company will only pay for like 10 visits a year.

    I know a family with a son with PDD-NOS, whos mother still swears by drugs (God knows her son takes enough), who went 5 years with drugs making her son worse (either more zombie or more crazy). Then when she found a combination that does neither voila, its all thanks to the drugs the kid didn’t mature at all in those 5 yearse!… I don’t get such people…

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