I disagree with Dr. Healy’s conclusion that SSRI drugs cause violence [“Top psychiatrist: Meds behind school massacres”].
He argued that “When roughly nine out of every 10 cases in these school shootings and mass shootings involve these drugs being prescribed, then at least a significant proportion of these cases were either caused by the drugs or the drugs made a significant contribution to the problem.” The problem with this argument is that he doesn’t know what the baseline is. He doesn’t know how violent the population who are prescribed these drugs would be if they weren’t prescribed them. He also doesn’t know that they were taking their prescribed medication. There are plenty of horror stories of what mentally ill people have done after they stopped taking their medication. The one person I knew who was taking SSRI medication was a lot less angry and violent after taking them than before he took them. In fact, he’s not violent anymore, and his underlying kind personality has come to the surface since taking SSRIs.
Gamaliel Isaac
