Friend: Minn. Gunman took Antidepressants

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=4&u=/ap/school_shooting&sid=84439559

<snip>
BEMIDJI, Minn. - The teenager who went on a shooting rampage at his high school was put on the antidepressant Prozac after a suicide scare last summer, a longtime friend says.

Grant, who was taking Zoloft, said he and Weise talked in detail about antidepressants. He said Weise told him he was taking 40 milligrams a day of Prozac: 20 in the morning, 20 at night.

In October, the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) ordered that all antidepressants carry "black box" warnings of an increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children. Prozac is the only antidepressant found to be safe and effective for children.

Notice how people who should know better keep hedging on the dangers of psychotropes. It's CYA for mental health professionals, scientists, and big pharma.

All psychotropes, including Prozac, are very bad... ALL OF THEM!

Sue

Stuff saved my life.

They can be miracle drugs for people with major depression, but they need to be combined with close monitoring and extensive talking therapy, especially in teenagers.

The usual window for suicide with antidepressants is the first few weeks, when the patient feels more energy but is still depressed.

My best guess is that Prozac didn't cause this or even contribute to it; it just failed to stop it, probably because the kid wasn't getting adequate therapy.

Mental health care in this country is largely ignored and medication is used as a substitute for the labor intensive business of therapy. That is what is causing the problem, not the drugs themselves.

There are so many factors here including time of the year. Many depressives are actually bi-polar and this is the time of year that many are cycling from one phase to the other. Handing out pills for depression is somewhat akin to handing out pills for hypertension without looking at eating and exercising habits and assisting a patient to quit smoking. It's a start, but hardly a complete treatment.

developed until a person is 25 and the last part that develops is the area that controls impulse - you have to wonder if these drugs have a different effect on kids than they do on adults.

(Though I agree with you that drugs are used as a substitute for therapy and that this kid was not getting the help he needed.)

And, if so, it leaves health care providers, children, and families between a very big rock and a hard place, at least for children whose depression does not respond to therapy alone. It does appear that depression has an adverse affect on development, leaving everyone to evaluate the risk/benefit equation to no end.
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/72/81877.htm

it"

I couldn't agree with you more. Good luck trying to reason with the anti anti-depressant crowd. You mine as well go to a Freeper convention and discuss the topic of free speech! :eyes:

Institutionalization for life! Woo hoo!

Oh, and, of course, more suicides! Rock and Roll!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/02/health/webmd/main671167.shtml




:eyes:

are properly conducted, then these medications can be "very therapeutic." This child should have received ongoing counseling as well as been monitored for potential side effects of this antidepressant.

No, pills (psychotropics) are not THE answer, but properly integrated into a holistic approach to mental health care they can be a valuable part of the equation.

Sadly, if we had President Gore in office, his wife Tipper would have made a "huge positive" influence on the mental health care system.

But in one respect, you're absolutely correct, General Practitioners should NOT be prescribing psychotropics AND the Psychiatrists should be required by law to follow-up with the patient at regular intervals to prevent any complications and monitor aberrant behaviors that might result from such administration.

No easy answer. With the lack of funding, it's unfortunately, the responsibility of close friends and family members to "make themselves smart" in order to get their loved one's the proper mental health care.

This retired social worker believes you are very correct. I managed literally thousands of cases.

That's a pretty broad brushstroke.

I'd like to know what that person based that comment on as well - not very productive if you ask me...

Hypothetically, let's say that the Prozac was responsible for this kid's actions (a point I don't concede, but for the sake of argument). If you banned "all psychotropes, including Prozac" tomorrow, the net loss of life from people committing suicide from unmedicated depression/mood disorders would outweigh by a mile the loss of life from horror stories like this.

Prozac is a medication. Medications have side effects. A given percentage of people will predictably have side effects, some serious, when distributed en masse.

Do you feel that birth control pills are very bad? After all, it's an elective medication for the vast majority of women who take them, and they have some pretty serious side effects (some potentially lethal) that go along with them.

that these days medication is given INSTEAD OF psychotherapy....it was meant to be given WITH psychotherapy. I can just imagine the quality of mental health care in this place....

the medication helps severly depressed people talk more easily to the therapist.

the family doctor....and there is NO THERAPY given with them. No psychiatric study ever said that these medications should be given without therapy or counselling.

It should be mandatory that a child see a psychologist along with the psychiatrist (drug dealer) during any treatment. I took Prozac prescribed by my Primary Doc, but I knew what I was supposed to be thinking, I just couldn't overcome the physical exhaustion my brain had endured during my divorce. It was good chemistry for me and I stopped taking it when I was able to - without any direction.

a drug prescription. $125.00 a visit.

10 minutes and "bang" - here's your drug prescription. I learned more about my daughters issues on the internet and I leanred more about potential drug issues on the internet as well. It's even taken 4 psychologists before we found one worth a shit (or who didn't get depressed themsleves or quit the profession). Oh, well, it's a crappy field and the people who get into it seem to be a bit odd to me - but that's JMHO :D

He had an assembly line going: three minutes and you're out the door. He must have made a fortune.

Every time I was in the waiting room other patients would speak along the lines of "I wonder how long this one is going to take... BUT I don't care because he actually takes time to talk with you"

This wasn't a therapist, but a psychiatrist. You would be scheduled for 15 minutes, but he'd regularly end up seeing people for over an hour if he felt it was needed. This is usually what they off load to therapists, but this guy did both and he was great at it. All the extra time at no charge.

Oh, and you know what he always said? The insurance companies whenever they found out would always call and harass him about spending too much time with patients!

You lucked out.

"profession" of psychiatry. My brother died.

And as for the push to allow psychologists to prescribe...watch me come out of the woodwork for that one.

But I think I'm unusual in that work was my therapy. I'm a doer by nature, and throwing myself into getting my work done, doing it well and getting my career on track was priceless therapy for me.

My biggest concern is monitoring (and the lack of it) and giving an anti-depressant to someone who is experiencing situational depression.

Major depression is biologically based and should be treated like any other illness. But if one is depressed over the loss of a job, loss of a loved one, etc., is medication really the way to go? Wouldn't talk therapy, or therapy of some sort, be a better choice?

to prescribe SSRIs to you..they are not qualified..yet, they get away with it, and hand this stuff out like candy.
The only person who should be prescibing this stuff is a qualified Psychiatrist..this from a good friend of mine who is a qualified psychiatrist, and she says that far too many GPs take the easy route and hand these out, sometimes as freebie samples..
and they are very dangerous..and yes, they need to be followed up with psychiatric counseling.
The pill pushed EZ fix of many doctors is dangerous.

This retired social worker agrees with you.

Most doctors can write. Few of them monitor the psych meds they prescribe with any skill. They should put "black box" warnings on doctors.

/typo

The article does say that the teen may have entered a psychiatric hospital last year. It does not talk about what follow up was done. Children react differently to medications, sometimes opposite to the reaction in adults. Monitoring is poor is many cases.

Before I learned to stop being shy and how to get into their faces. Doug's condition makes him very pragmatic, so he does literally what the doctor orders.

The worst time was when I was working in L.A. and Doug was still up in SanFran. My friends flew him down to me because he was having psychotic episodes. When I picked him up, his jaw was clamping shut from one of the meds. And his blood sugar was 680.

Since I got real doctors for him, he's been fine. But, all those people in the public mental health system are at very, very serious risk and so are their families, their neighbors, their schools. :(

Try "gunkid"...

my chemo. I was depressed. I would cry because I was depressed. Prozac was terrible. I can remember crying and not caring why I was crying. Scary stuff. Threw it away. I'd rather know I'm depressed.

Look, Prozac is neither a demon nor a cure-all.

I take Prozac (it's a cheaper co-pay and it seems to work better for me than Zoloft) and it has done wonders for me.

How about the fact that this kid went through a shitload of tragedy in his life? It doesn't excuse what he did, but it certainly makes a lot more sense than suggesting "Prozac Made Him Kill".

solution is the problem.

is a much better alternative. Spare me your "easy" solution bull shit. Unless you've been there you have NO idea what you're talking about. It sounds as ignorant as someone who's male saying he knows what child birth is like, and then having the nerve to go around saying it's easy.

solution. 15 minutes and $125.00 in a psychiatrist's office will buy you 3 mind altering prescriptions.

but how did you come to the conclusion that antidepressants caused his death?

got drugs. When the police searched his car after he ran it into a tree, they found bottles of presciption pills.

We knew that he had problems. We were happy he was seeing a psychiatrist. We tried being supportive. We trusted the system of mental health care.

After his death, we found out the truth. It was all in his records. In the two years that he took these drugs, the psychiatrist never even sent him for a liver screen.

I've found out a lot since then. I'll never trust the system again.

But not a reason to indict the entire profession of psychiatry:

"I see no difference between the street dealer and the "profession" of psychiatry."

It MUST have been the SSRI. I mean, it's not like people killed themselves prior to anti-depressants or anything.

Gee, come to think of it... That cancer patient was taking some meds. I know! It MUST have been the meds that did him in! Damn doctors said it was some illness.

These are interesting, thoughtful pieces. I have some issues with both pieces, but they do offer more considered assessments than most MSM accounts of the issue.

Beware of Doing More Harm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1922-2004Oct1.html

The rush to black label (or blackball) SSRIs
http://www.medicalprogresstoday.com/spotlight/spotlight_indarchive.php?id=298

'thugs try to talk their way out of this one.

As someone who has lost his only brother, a good friend, and far too many acquaintances (usually good friends of my good friends) to suicide following untreated and self-medicated depression and other issues, and as someone who knows the benefits that many friends and acquaintances (more than a few of whom made suicidal gestures prior to treatment) have derived from SSRI treatment and SSRI/therapy combined treatment, it's very difficult for me to read the total denunciation of psychiatry, psychology, SSRIs and psychotropic medications in general on this board.

It's difficult to step back from it all, especially in the face of loss. Believe me, I know firsthand. But for the sake of others, I believe we must. I hope that conversation on these matters can evolve to a more constructive effort.

Study: Benefits of Antidepressants Outweigh Risks
http://health.yahoo.com/news/57904

As you know, I also agree that the especially harsh denunciation of almost any sort of psychotropic drug by some on this board is annoying at best, and potentially hurting people who need help at worst. If the people that made these blanket statements had any idea of the benefit millions of people (whose issues they have not had to deal with) recieved from these drugs, perhaps they would bite their tongues a bit.

We all have made good points. I, too, am hoping for intelligent discussion. There are many good points on both sides. And there are connections to discussions about the safety of many other drugs.

There are many benefits to taking antidepressants. Many have been helped with a combination of therapy and drugs. There is a rush to blame in our society and in the media. We want easy answers to our health and to our problems. This teen did have a rough life, and there were many factors that led to his actions. Thimersol is another example in the immunizations. The benefits of immunization are tremendous. The benefits of statins in lowering cholesterol in conjunction with diet and exercise and MONITORING, far outweigh the possible side effects, and so on.

On the other side, the drug companies have not helped themselves of late, nor the FDA. There are instances of extreme violence where antidepressants were taken. The general public is beginning to find it difficult to know what to trust. If they read about a study, do they know who paid for the study. Are the results tampered with. The guidelines for many drugs are being written by doctors who also receive money from the same companies. Doctors do rush to prescribe the latest cure all medicines. Follow up is crucial, but difficult. Without insurance, many take drugs haphazardly or intermittantly or not at all. Psychiatric care has been in a free fall since the 1980's. Look at your homeless to find many who would have been hospitalized 20 years ago. Insurance companies dictate how many sessions you can have with what level of therapist - which may not be enough.

I think it is ALWAYS right to ask questions. I think it is ALWAYS right to debate issues. With honest debate, the truth will be found. But both sides must be honest. With the current support for corporations rather than individuals from the current administration, I wonder if an honest debate is possible.

By the way, here is another article regarding this individual and his medication, with a little additional information. His aunts report that his dosage was recently increased. They felt it was too much for him. Are they right to question? or are they just quick to blame? Do any of us know enough to know the answer? Should it be investigated as a factor in this horrible event? Absolutely.

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/03/25_helmsm_prozacfolo/

Sorry to be so long winded.

Especially neo nazis need to be monitored, to say the least.

every killing related to juveniles together. Without the guns, none of the victims would be dead. Clearly this boy had a long and troubled past and lived in a world where alcoholism, drug abuse, and poverty were rampant. Even with therapy and good medication followup, he would not have a terrific prognosis. But without the guns, none of the rampage could have occured.

Gun control, now there is another rant...

if we find a single, simple thing to blame. Then we don't have to deal with all the complexities of real life like economics, abuse, education, support etc.

and he was depressed and had guns and the historic and cultural issues of Red Lake and liked Hitler and was 16 and took prozac... Maybe he ran out, maybe he just snapped, maybe who knows, cept the dead.

Its tragedy... what more can you say or do?

Unless you have been on some of this medication for awhile I would not be so dismissive of it. There is more than enough evidence in correlation to point this being a very dangerous mind-altering set of chemicals. They should have saved the scripting for the infamous "Reefer Madness" for this stuff it seems to me


http://www.theharbinger.org/xvi/971111/

If that was what you were responding to. And while it's pointless to make anonymous claims to any effect here. I don't dismiss meds (their benefits or risks) lightly.

However, like most things, SSRIs are neither so great or so terrible as they are depicted (and I'd say Reefer Madness is a great analogy). Usually the truth of such things is that medicine isn't a silver bullet because it can't overcome continued abuse, neglect, lack of education, poverty, lack of cognitive skills, etc. So I'm very hesitant to jump on a "IT'S THE MED!" Bandwagon when it comes to determining why this kid who appears to have a typical life from hell might have finally snapped.

Looking at how this kid lived, what had happened to him...and the lack of social supports in his life, I just find it absurd that the first thing out of anyone's mouth would be...IT MUST BE THE MEDS!

on that stuff? When I was a teenager (over thirty years ago)when some loner that was in desperate need of friends and did the same kind of thing at our school. He wasn't deadly but he did put two of our Friends in the hospital after he shot them. This kid wasn't on drugs but just came from a broken family,he couldn't deal with rejection and never figured out how deal with people after he was picked on.

Being a good Samaritan and or sticking up for others who are getting picked on unjustly is a good thing. If that don't happen, then sooner or later it will everybody's business. The bullies only become humble after they get their teeth kicked (figuratively or literally of course) in a few times I am sad to say

Btw, from experience I can tell you getting off them antidepressants can be nasty and I hear Prozac is really bad for that. I can only wonder about that part of the story

Red Lake, Minn. — In their sleepless search for answers, the family of Jeff Weise, the teenager who killed nine people and then himself, say they are left wondering about the drugs Weise was prescribed for depression.

On Friday, as Tammy Lussier prepared to bury Weise, the nephew whom she lived with, and her father, who was among those killed, she found herself looking back over the last year, she said, when Weise began taking Prozac, the antidepressant, after a suicide attempt she described as a “cry for help.”

“They kept upping the dose for him, and by the end, he was taking three of the 20 milligram pills a day,” she said. “I can't help but think it was too much, that it must have set him off.”

more...

http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=B069A504-BB4B-4AF7-BA44-5D110C2C169A

Was he getting any? They've proven that SSRI's without counseling are NOT effective, esp. in teens.

I feel so bad for the families in this horrible tragedy. Where is the coverage on this? All we hear about is Terri Shiavo. What about these people?

Sad, sad, sad.

Let's get to the reasons the kid was on an anti-depressant drug to begin with. Until we stop drugging and start treating/getting to the roots of the problems, this is going to go on and on........

Left of cool

He had a sweet young face ...should have had some hope too....

Are there any adults left on the planet who will stand up and simply state the obvious, our kids are damaged and sick?

They've made up their minds and they can't be changed. Very few have even taken the drugs themselves - and many have never experienced depression. I have learned to ignore these "do-gooders" here - they do more harm than good - oh, well.

BTW, yes, the kids are damaged and sick - and anti-depressants along with therapy are helping many millions of these kids. God forbid that one occasionally can't be saved. It's a shame when someone takes out there misery on others around them - it's not going to stop happening no matter what drugs and or therapy exist - at least not for the foreseeable future. I suppose we could take the right wing tract of "lock 'em up" as soon as they express angry thoughts...

but this retired social worker is totally against the use of psychotropic meds on a teenager. To often, some psychiatrist, who sees the kid for ten minutes at a shot once per month, tells the family that "depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain," implying that we know a little something about the human brain, when in fact we know very little.

Human depression is very complex, and requires observation from both the patient and the family/friends of the patient as to how things are going; this monitoring must be constant and persistent. Psychotropics on teens, in my humble opinion, should be used for a short time, in conjunction with very intense talk/family therapy (you change the chemicals in your brain also when you change your thinking pattern).

Within six months of initial prescription, far too often I would see intense depression and suicidality.

Just my humble opinion (and I was seeing this from 1993 to 2000).

For those who disagree, there is certainly room for disagreement.

But all mental health practitioners I worked with agreed that there was far too little funding for teenage/child mental health in this country; even all of my psychiatrist friends agreed that (1) a psychiatrist needed to be the one prescibing the meds (not the GP), and (2) that there needed to be a comprehensive program including family therapy.

and then you are on an emotional roller-coaster ride. And the SSRI's do remove some inhibitions to acting out on your impulses. At least Zoloft did to me.

Personally, I don't think that meds are ever an appropriate treatment for depression.

meds do help WITH therapy for the youth and family. Too many people stop seeing a therapist or can't afford it or run out of visits. There are people with serious mood disorders who may rapidly deteriorate into psychotic states without meds. Most of the time, psycho/social issues are not treated well by physicians b/c of insurance or the lack thereof. I should know, I work this stuff everyday.....

I was on and off many different meds for many years. The meds only mask the symptoms - and in some cases make them worse.

I didn't get better until I decided to fix myself - through reading and introspection, mostly. And even though I was under severe stress when I had an "acting out" episode on Zoloft (I didn't kill anyone, thankfully) - I know that I had never acted out in such a way on my impulses before.

Zoloft is an especially angry drug.

and its also true that personal change is a choice available to anyone as well. Congratulations on your fix.

in combination with other anti-psychotics for over ten years,and one thing i've learned is what works for one does not work for all. Masking symptoms you say? Reading and introspection is the cure? Its a good thing i didn't run into you before i got help. Do you realize how harmful your advice could be?

There is no across the board effective treatment for depression, anxiety disorders, or even bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and all the individual versions (symptom groupings, if you will) that cross the diagnostic boundaries. For a layperson to advise anyone that he or she should or should not use medicine as a part of treatment is incredibly dangerous.

Anyone read the book reviewed here?
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/23/105035.php

Night Falls Fast : Understanding Suicide --
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375701478/104-9196458-8952723

Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are --
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0142001783/qid=1111945896/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-9196458-8952723?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

How on Earth can these FDA suits now be saying that prozac may be a danger just to children? Ah! like magically at 18 years old you aren't susceptible to prozac's dangers anymore? that makes no sense.

It was like a miracle for me - I guess it works differently for different people - 'course no other drugs are like that?

fer kristophssakes! Idiots...freaking idiots (the prescriber, of course!)

Edited to add: LAWSUIT! And I am far from being a letigeous person! :mad:

Jenn

It's nice to see that many of you see the light on this matter, that proper treatment and prescription of any drug is essential to its efficacy. Thanks so much for not being the "SSRIs R 3b1l l0l0l0l0" idiots I was really afraid I would see more of. Thank you. I really AM on the right side after all :)

http://www.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2003/june/heeringen.asp

This is a fair, well-thought out review of the evidence regarding the etiology of suicide and current treatment, up to the date of publication. It's definitely worth a read, no matter your stance on the issues at hand, IMHO.

I only did a quick scan, and I will read in full later. Interesting that there are 3 neuro systems involved in suicidal behavior. If Prozac and the other anti-depressants work on the serotonin system, then combination therapy with other drugs may work better in certain people or may work alone in certain other people, and all in conjunction with psychiatric therapy. If I am reading this correctly.

Thanks again!

The great thing about the Canadian Psychiatric Journal is that it's available to everyone, going back a few years, so it's a good place to look for peer-reviewed information without spending time in a Health Science library to do it.

There is a recent study which seems to downplay the apparent role of the HPA system in regard to depression, at least. But one study does not mean much in the bigger scheme of things.

Salud.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006AF90-5BC7-1E1B-8B3B809EC588EEDF

Another worthy exploration of the issue.

usually comes at about three weeks into them. The effects that the drug were having on this boy could have caused this, don't know.

I have and there is no "split with reality".

... that SSRIs have nasty side effects in younger persons. This may or may not ever be "proven", but there is certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest it.

It is entirely possible that a drug that is "safe" in adults is less than safe in an adolescent.