Red Lake High School shooter's Prozac increased five days before shooting

[Guest guest]

This shooting is on line with the Columbine tragedy---why is there such a deep silence? Could it be because it's bad for pharma? Might make it a little difficult for Bush to carry out his "No child left unmedicated" plan in light of this....

 

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Red Lake shooter's Prozac increased five days before shooting

*** note: This is a private list. I send out alerts, useful news items, and comment to a group of professionals, decision makers and activists in the mental health community. Permission granted to forward unless expressly noted. ***-- Vince Boehm" <vince_19805

 

"Weise's relatives 'knew he had a problem with depression, and they took him to treatment,' Cook said. 'He was getting counseling.' His medication dosage had been increased a week earlier, Cook added" In October, the Food and Drug Administration revised the drugs' packaging to warn health professionals that they should closely monitor young patients when an antidepressant is prescribed or the dose is changed. (Paragraphs 8 & 9 read: "Dosage increased") http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5312255.html

BEMIDJI, MINN. -- Jeffrey Weise had "a good relationship" with the grandfather he shot and killed on Monday as prelude to his deadly assault on students and others at Red Lake High School, according to relatives who are struggling to understand what might have pushed the teenager from sometimes bizarre behavior to mass murder and suicide.They have sifted through the traumas of his childhood: his father's suicide, the car accident that left his mother with reduced mental capacity, the shuttling between the Red Lake Reservation and the Twin Cities, and the taunts of peers over his appearance, size and outsider behavior.They wondered, too, about medication he was supposedly taking for depression, and a recent increase in his prescribed dosage.Lee Cook, director of the American Indian Cultural Center at Bemidji State University and a first cousin to Sgt. Daryl (Dash) Lussier, the grandfather, talked about the tragedy Thursday after meeting on the reservation

with Lussier's brother, three daughters and other family members."The daughters said Jeff loved his grandfather, and his grandfather loved him," Cook said. "There had never been any serious differences or harsh words between them."They were surprised by all of this, but they were stunned he would shoot his grandfather."The .22-caliber rifle that Weise apparently used to kill Lussier and his companion, Michele Sigana, "might have been Dash's rifle, one he kept around for the kids for hunting," Cook said.Dosage increasedWeise's relatives "knew he had a problem with depression, and they took him to treatment," Cook said. "He was getting counseling." His medication dosage had been increased a week earlier, Cook added.His grandmother, Shelda Lussier, 54, said he saw a mental health professional at Red Lake Hospital on Feb. 21, the

same day his prescription was refilled for 60 milligrams a day of Prozac, which he had been taking since last summer, the Washington Post reported.Studies have linked Prozac and similar antidepressants to a greater risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in kids. In October, the Food and Drug Administration revised the drugs' packaging to warn health professionals that they should closely monitor young patients when an antidepressant is prescribed or the dose is changed.Prozac's manufacturer said monitoring patients being treated for depression is critical, especially if they are children. Weise, in hundreds of postings attributed to him on the Internet over the past year or so, noted that he was on antidepressants, was going through therapy in Thief River Falls and had attempted suicide at least once by cutting his wrists.In a

posting in January, Weise also wrote of his regret over not having ended his life and hinted that another attempt could be on the way. Friends of Weise said this week that he had tried to kill himself earlier this year. School officials and others have refused to discuss his medical situation except to confirm that he was placed on "homebound status" this year for an unspecified medical problem.Relatives also "knew he spent time on the Internet, but they didn't really know what he was into there," Cook said, and reports detailing Weise's postings on a Nazi web site have them shaking their heads.Weise, under a variety of user names, also visited other sites dealing with everything from government conspiracies to surviving school shootings. Last fall he posted a bloody animated video on the Internet in which four people are shot to death before the gunman shoots himself. "He was brighter than usual and had a vocabulary more like a college student than a

16-year-old," Cook said.

 

[if these aren't signs of a kid who could "go postal" as did many postal workers who killed after taking Prozac, I don't know what is. Another "sign" of the pathological medical-industrial complex that is "making a killing" at the expense of the "do no harm" Hippocratic oath of healing professionals. As with the military-industrial complex, we see where a "pound of cure" has becomes 16 times more profitable than an ounce of common sense prevention. -CR]

Weise also had a traumatic early childhood, moving from school to school and experiencing the loss of both parents before he was 10 years old. His father, Daryl Lussier Jr., committed suicide in July 1997 during a police stand-off on the reservation. Weise's mother, Joanne, suffered brain damage in 1999 when she and a friend crashed their car after drinking.>cut>Visitation for Lussier and his girlfriend, Michelle Sigana, began Thursday at the Humanities Building in Red Lake. Funeral services for them will be held there at 10 a.m. Saturday.Chuck Haga is at crhaga.------------ related newsbyte:"Thomas R. Ascher" <lifeforce"Duane Thorin" <duaneRe: Finally it appears, the Prozac Hi Duane: This was confirmed tonight (almost in passing) by ABC News. No surprise. I fully expected that this kid was on mind candy.

 

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to: Recipient List Suppressed:

Thursday, March 24, 2005 2:17 PM

Finally it appears, the Prozac

I wondered why the current High School Massacre was getting almost no coverage, considering the bonus points to be made by the Anti Gun Lobby...

I searched the stories, (always look in the last paragraph, on page 17), for a line like the one below, which is ALWAYS THERE, hidden away. And it is always mentioned once, and never appears again in future stories. As with Columbine, and the many others, it was the underlying cause, of course....but it took a few days this time for the statement to show up.

Here it is before it goes down the memory hole. dd

http://rense.com/general63/shooter.htm

"He was taking the antidepressant Prozac and at least once was hospitalized for suicidal tendencies, said Gayle Downwind, a cultural coordinator at Red Lake Middle School, who taught Weise."

-- from THE WASHINGTON POST

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