Dubious Drug Therapy: By Keith Hoeller

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Tue, 29 Mar 2005 21:10:03 -0500

Dubious Drug Therapy: By Keith Hoeller

 

 

 

Paragraphs 2 & 3 read: " If only the child had been placed on

antidepressant medications, psychiatrists say, this murder/suicide

would never have happened. The story is usually followed by calls for

more mental health screening and treatment of schoolchildren. "

 

" However, in most cases of school shootings, the signs had been

noticed, the child had been reported to mental health authorities, he

had received a psychiatric diagnosis, he been put on psychiatric

medications and was taking the medications when he pulled the trigger. "

 

 

http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20050328-103929-3760r.htm

 

Dubious drug therapy

 

By Keith Hoeller

 

Another teenager has shot and murdered schoolchildren and mental

health movement proponents have offered us the standard explanation

and the usual solution. This child was mentally ill, we are told, and

if only someone had seen the symptoms and notified mental health

authorities, the child would have been accurately diagnosed, given the

proper medication, and this tragedy could have been prevented.

 

If only the child had been placed on antidepressant medications,

psychiatrists say, this murder/suicide would never have happened. The

story is usually followed by calls for more mental health screening

and treatment of schoolchildren.

 

However, in most cases of school shootings, the signs had been

noticed, the child had been reported to mental health authorities, he

had received a psychiatric diagnosis, he been put on psychiatric

medications and was taking the medications when he pulled the trigger.

 

Eric Harris of Columbine was on the antidepressant Luvox and Kip

Kinkel in Oregon was on Prozac. And the same was true in perhaps a

dozen cases in all. And this may be the tip of the iceberg, since this

information is often kept confidential and out of the papers, even

when a murder occurs.

 

Now news reports indicate Jeff Weise, the murderer of 10 in Red Lake,

Minn., had been suicidal and committed to a mental hospital. He began

taking an antidepressant last summer, and his dosage had been

increased a week before the shootings.

 

In 2003, Britain banned giving antidepressants to children and

adolescents, and last year Health Canada issued a stern warning about

these drugs: " There are clinical trial and post-marketing reports with

SSRIs and other newer anti-depressants, in both pediatrics and adults,

of severe agitation-type adverse events coupled with self-harm or harm

to others. "

 

This year the Food and Drug Administration has mandated a black box on

antidepressants labels, warning of the potential for increasing

suicidal thoughts and behavior in children and adolescents. Yet, as

Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, has said:

 

" Journalists continue to be beguiled by speculative scientific

hypotheticals which psychiatrists discuss as though they have been

proven. Misinformation is transmitted to the public about unproven

'chemical imbalances' in the brain of depressed people -- when, in

fact, no evidence exists demonstrating any chemical or structural

brain abnormality in people diagnosed with a mental illness. "

 

Indeed, the papers are full of quotes of psychiatrists claiming

depression is a serious medical disease caused by a serotonin

imbalance in the brain. But there is no conclusive scientific in

support of this theory. Not surprisingly, psychiatrists have never

developed any physical test to detect depression or any mental

illness, and all diagnosis is done based solely on symptoms. In other

words, antidepressants and all other psychiatric medications are

medically unnecessary.

 

Yet whenever anyone criticizes the drugs, psychiatrists shout about

the increased risk of suicide if patients stop taking their

antidepressants, though no antidepressant has ever been tested on

suicidal patients and therefore never approved by the FDA as safe and

effective in preventing suicide.

 

President Bush included an unprecedented call for mandatory mental

health screening of schoolchildren in his recently passed budget bill.

Violating the rights of parents to just say no to psychiatric

diagnosis and treatment of their children, this idea originated in the

President's New Freedom Commission.

 

With 8 million children on psychiatric drugs, all signs indicate this

method of dealing with our children is not working.

 

It is time both parents and schools find a different way to deal with

troubled children. To paraphrase Shakespeare's " Julius Caesar, " the

fault is not in our children's brains or genes, but in ourselves, and

it is to our own treatment of children we must look to find an answer

to their problems -- and ours.

 

Keith Hoeller is editor of the Review of Existential Psychology &

Psychiatry, Seattle, Wash.