Stories and cases of psychiatry:
RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS:
Nikolas Cruz was noted as regularly taking his psychiatric medication before killing 17 students at his former school in Parkland, Florida.
Mass shootings make media headlines, yet the psychiatric drugs behind many are conspicuously absent in the articles.
Although there can be numerous explanations offered for senseless acts of violence, they continue unabated. A new report released by CCHR International sheds light on a common denominator in many mass shootings: psychotropic drugs.
With millions of people taking these drugs, clearly not everyone will experience violent reactions. But what drug regulatory agency warnings confirm is that a percentage of the population will. As CCHR’s report documents, of nearly 410 psychiatric drug warnings, 27 warned of violence, mania, psychosis, hostility, aggression or homicidal ideation and 49 of self-harm or suicide/suicidal ideation.
A leading psychopharmacologist pointed out that about five percent of those taking antidepressants in clinical trials drop out due to increased mental and/or physical agitation. If five percent of the 41 million Americans taking antidepressants were to experience increased mental and/or physical agitation, that equals 2.05 million people in the US alone. How many could become so agitated they become violent?
It is perhaps no coincidence acts of violence and suicide continue to increase at pace with the increase in the prescription of psychotropic drugs. It is a case of playing Russian roulette with people’s lives.
Law enforcement is not required to investigate or report on prescribed drugs linked to violence, and media rarely pose the question. From those with available medical data, over a three-decade period there were 65 high-profile acts of senseless violence confirmed as committed by individuals taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs, resulting in 357 dead and another 336 wounded. This included at least 36 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence.
The infamous Columbine ringleader, Eric Harris, was taking the antidepressant Luvox when he and a friend killed 13. Nikolas Cruz, killing 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, received treatment at Henderson Behavioral Health and a late 2016 report noted Cruz took his medication regularly. Stephen Paddock who shot dead 58 people at a Las Vegas country music festival on October 1, 2017, was on the sedative-hypnotic Valium.
Vested interests continue championing the use of such drugs, as the psychiatric-pharmaceutical drug industry rakes in $35 billion on average a year, just in the US. Antipsychotic drugs alone net the global pharmaceutical industry at least $14.6 billion annually. Is it possible that this vested interest is preventing a thorough investigation of this link, despite calls for such since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999?
It is perhaps no coincidence acts of violence and suicide continue to increase at pace with the increase in the prescription of psychotropic drugs.
In her 1999 article, “Guns and Doses,” former Congressional staffer and award-winning journalist, Kelly Patricia O’Meara stated: “Although the list of school-age children who have gone on violent rampages is growing at a disturbing rate—few in the mental health community have been willing to talk about the possibility that the heavily prescribed drugs and violence may be linked.” Such drugs were the common denominator between the cases of school shooters she cited.
In response, then Colorado State Representative Penn Pfiffner chaired a hearing to address the connection between violent behavior and psychotropic drugs. He noted: “There is enough coincidence and enough professional opinion from legitimate scientists to cause us to raise the issue and to ask further questions.”
CCHR Warns Against Psychedelic Trips Potentially Planned for 55m Americans, including Teens
“Those profiting from psychedelic drug research are embedding some of the most dangerous drugs, psychedelics, into the mental health industry today.” – CCHR International
Mental health industry watchdog expands its investigation into failed psychedelic “solutions” being marketed to treat mental issues, citing latest questionable survey
By CCHR International - The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
The Citizen Commission on Human Rights, a mental health industry watchdog, warns of a dangerous direction the industry is taking for consumers embracing psychedelics as a treatment for those allegedly “resistant” to antidepressants, and more. The latest marketing of this thrust is a survey that asserts that 65% of Americans with anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) believe that psychedelic drugs should be made available for them as treatment.[1] Were this the case, based on psychiatric statistics that an estimated 84.5 million adolescents and adults in the U.S. have these disorders, there could be 55 million prospects for a “turn on, tune-out” mind-altering future.
The figures came from an online survey of a mere 2,037 adults ages 18 and older. Among them, were 953 people who suffer from the three disorders. In a semantic leap, this was translated to say nearly two-thirds of Americans with the disorders favor psychedelics.
It is unclear what questions were asked to ascertain—and potentially skew—these findings. CCHR says propaganda by redefinition of words redefines psychedelic, mind-altering drugs as “plant medicines.”[2] The group calls this “Pied Piper” marketing, whereby people are lured in with delusive enticements of a “natural” solution to their woes. Those who have failed to improve from bio-psychiatric treatments get the idea they can receive safe “alternatives” at innocuous-sounding “retreat centers.”[3]
The surveyed respondents said that if these “medicines” were “proven more effective than prescription medication with fewer side effects,” they would take them. CCHR questions whether they were informed of the risks in order to arrive at that decision?
Some 66% agreed they would “be open to pursing” taking ketamine and 62% psilocybin, a hallucinogen and active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
Psilocybin adverse effects include: Impaired judgment and feelings of detachment, psychosis, anxiety and panic attacks.[4] Psilocybin is a Schedule I substance that the Drug Enforcement Administration believes has a high potential for abuse and serves no legitimate medical purpose.[5]
Ketamine is known as a “date rape” drug, as it causes disassociation where rape victims can lose consciousness or be confused and compliant.[6] Ketamine can also cause irregular heartbeat; seizures; painful urination; unusual excitement, nervousness, or restlessness; and feeling things that are not there.[7]
The source of the survey owns 12 psychedelic mental health clinics defined as “ketamine wellness clinics” and has plans to open an additional 15.[8]
The psychedelics industry is predicted to soon reach $7 billion a year.[9] Last year funding to psychedelic drug companies surpassed $730m up from 42 in 2020—a 1,638% increase in what is called “The Psychedelic Renaissance.”[10] There was an also an investment of $358m into psychedelic startups in 2020.[11]
Following Food and Drug Administration approval of the first SSRI antidepressant in 1987, for the next 15 years, psychiatrists advocated antidepressants as the most “effective” treatment for children and teens with depression. That proved false—and harmful. In 2004, the FDA determined the drugs could induce suicide in those 18 years of age and younger, later extended to age 24.
Today, in the throes of marketing psychedelics to treat teen angst, it is claimed that around 40% of adolescents on SSRI antidepressants fail to respond. Already, ketamine is being administered to those aged 12 to 18.[12]
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 30% of people do not respond to antidepressants, psychotherapy or electroshock treatment.[13] In reality, “do not respond,” means utter failure, CCHR says. In 2017, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Health, Dr. Dainius Pūras wrote: “There is now unequivocal evidence of the failures of a system that relies too heavily on the biomedical model of mental health services, including the front-line and excessive use of psychotropic medicines, and yet these models persist.”[14] He reiterated this in June 2021.[15]
Yet, CCHR says those profiting from psychedelic drug research are embedding some of the most dangerous drugs, psychedelics, into the mental health industry today. One such company has investors that include a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for 13 years, who was quoted in a June 2021 WHO guideline against coercive psychiatric treatment, saying NIMH spent some $20 billion on mental health research during his tenure. He conceded: “I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness.” [16]
CCHR predicts any research emphasis on psychedelic drugs—yet another biomedical model—will not only not “move the needle” to improve mental health problems, but it will worsen it—escalating mental health harm and disaster. The “Psychedelic Renaissance” will simply resurrect an era of psychiatric madness, of bizarre LSD mind control experiments, which drove patients out of their minds and failed to benefit them.
NB: In June 2019, the dwindling spiral back into mind-control drugs came to light in an article about the historic meeting of the FDA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) communicating publicly about psychedelic drug development and current thinking around safety, therapeutic use, and research. The FDA Division of Psychiatry Products provided information in a workshop about how to design and efficiently study psychedelics for potential medical use. For the first time these two agencies publicly addressed the issue at the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP) annual meeting.[17]
"Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost no—none of these events in our country, and we’ve never seen them in human history, where people walk into a school room of children or strangers and start shooting people."
- Robert F. Kennedy Jnr., Secretary of Health, United States Government
On August 30, 2006, 19-year-old Alvaro Castillo shot his father Rafael dead in their family home. He then dressed in a black trench coat, drove to Orange High School in Hillsborough, North Carolina — his former school — and opened fire. He fired more than 170 rounds into an area crowded with students on their lunch break.
Two students were wounded. He was tackled by school personnel and arrested.
His mother confirmed he was on drugs for depression.
The specific antidepressant was never publicly named. What is confirmed is that Castillo had been placed on an antidepressant by a psychiatrist following an involuntary commitment earlier that year. One prescription. That was the psychiatric system's entire response.
Antidepressants carry the FDA's black box warning — the most serious category of warning the agency issues — specifically flagging children, adolescents, and young adults for increased risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour.
The documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. The FDA further flags that these risks are heightened during two specific windows: when starting the drug and when stopping it. Discontinuation — stopping an antidepressant — is documented to trigger severe irritability, aggression, and mood instability that can persist for weeks after the last dose.
A young man on antidepressants prescribed by a psychiatrist. The drug was never named. The drug angle was never investigated.
He killed his father and opened fire on a school full of students.
On November 8, 2005, 14-year-old Kenneth Bartley walked into the principal's office at Campbell County Comprehensive School in Jacksboro, Tennessee. Three school administrators had called him in after hearing he had a gun. He shot all three of them. Assistant Principal Ken Bruce, 48, was shot in the chest. He died. Principal Gary Seale and Assistant Principal Jim Pierce were both wounded.
Bartley was taking Xanax at the time of the shooting. Just before walking into that office, he had snorted a crushed Valium pill.
________________________________________
Two benzodiazepines. Both in his system at the same time. In a 14-year-old.
Xanax and Valium are both psychiatric drugs prescribed to reduce anxiety. What most people don't know is that the FDA has documented a paradoxical reaction to both — where instead of producing calm, these drugs produce the opposite. Agitation. Aggression. Hostility. A complete loss of the impulse control that would normally stop someone from acting on a violent thought. The FDA specifically flags children and adolescents as most vulnerable to these reactions.
Two psychiatric drugs — both carrying FDA documentation that they can cause aggression and disinhibition in young people as a known side effect. One of them snorted for maximum speed.
An assistant principal was dead within minutes.
The drug question was never seriously investigated as a contributing factor. Bartley was tried and convicted and the focus stayed on the shooting — not on what was in his system when it happened.
Ken Bruce was 48 years old. He was shot in the chest in his own school office. He had a wife and a family. Nobody has ever been held accountable for putting two of these drugs into a 14-year-old.
New Study Confirms Child and Youth Suicide Risk with Antidepressants
CCHR warns that 5.7 million 0-24-year-olds on antidepressants face increased suicide risks, as new study confirms.
In a new study published in Neuropsychopharmacology, researchers have found selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants increase the risk of suicide attempts threefold for those younger than 18 and up to twofold for those aged 18-24. The drugs had no preventative effect at any age, even for those at high risk of suicide.[1] Psychiatrists and doctors are taking enormous risks in continuing to prescribe these drugs to children, teens, and young adults, given long-term research findings. The IQVia Total Patient Tracker Database reports that in 2020, an estimated 5.7 million Americans ages 0-24 were prescribed antidepressants, of which 2.1 million were 17 or younger. More than 35,210 children were ages 5 or younger.[2]
The study was led by Tyra Lagerberg at the Karolinska Institutet, a medical university in Stockholm, Sweden. It found a higher risk of suicidal behavior in individuals under 25 treated with SSRIs after a depression diagnosis compared to untreated counterparts. “There is evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that antidepressant treatment increases risk of newly onset suicide attempts or ideation in children and adolescents.”[3]
Strike One: Suicide
Despite having evidence of the suicide risk in 1991, it took a 13-year campaign by parent groups, doctors, attorneys, and CCHR, to get the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2004 to add a black box suicide warning to antidepressants, initially for children and adolescents, and in 2007 expanded to include ages up to 24.
One would have expected a decline in their prescribing. A 2016 study published in the BMJ medical journal warned doctors to “avoid prescribing antidepressants to children and teenagers wherever possible because they are associated with a doubling in the risk of aggression and suicide.”[4]
However, profit—an estimated $28.6 billion in global antidepressant sales in 2020[5]—is a strong incentive for prescribers to ignore the warnings, Jan Eastgate, president of CCHR International, says.
Since the FDA warning, doctors and psychiatrists have continued to prescribe the powerful drugs to this age group. Indeed, the Neuropsychopharmacology study showed SSRI antidepressants are the first-line pharmacological treatment for depression and other so-called mental disorders. Furthermore, “the prevalence of antidepressant use in children and adolescents increased from 13 to 16% in the USA and from 07 to 11% in the United Kingdom in 2005–2012,” according to another study published in Frontiers Psychiatry in May 2022.[6]
That meta-analysis of antidepressant studies also confirmed that antidepressant exposure significantly increased the risk of suicide and suicide attempts when compared with no antidepressant usage among children and adolescents.[7]
In April this year, a University of East London study reviewed media reports on nearly 8,000 coroners’ inquests and found that antidepressants were linked to 2,718 cases of hanging, 933 overdose deaths, and 979 suicides.[8]
CCHR’s national Australian office obtained adverse event reports on psychiatric drugs from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), equivalent to the FDA, that reported suicides in children aged between 10 and 19 linked to antidepressants.[9]
CCHR has recorded cases such as a 14-year-old Irish boy who shot and killed himself after 46 days on fluoxetine (Prozac). His grieving mother said, “My son had no history of self-harm, depression or suicidal thoughts, he’d just had anxiety,” until prescribed the drug. The psychiatrist prescribed the antidepressant to “help” the teen “with his exams,” after seeing him for only 10 minutes, according to the mother.[10]
One parent leading the campaign to expose psychiatric drug suicide risks is Mathy Milling Downing, whose 12-year-old daughter, Candace, tragically took her own life four days after starting on an antidepressant also prescribed for exam anxiety.[11] Mrs. Downing is one of numerous mothers who speak candidly about being misinformed about antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs, with similar tragic results for their children. The mothers are part of CCHR’s must-see documentary for parents, Dead Wrong: How Psychiatric Drugs Can Kill Your Child.[12]
The documentary host, Celest Steubing, courageously speaks out about her 18-year-old son, Matthew, who parked his Ford pickup truck on an aging bridge, climbed the span’s superstructure, and jumped, killing himself from the fall. Matthew had been a vibrant kid, happy and full of life. But after a rough patch in his senior year of high school left him feeling down, a psychologist suggested he would benefit from the antidepressant Lexapro (escitalopram). He became withdrawn and anxious, which Celeste said led to his suicide just nine weeks after starting on the drug.[13]
Strike Two: Violence
Antidepressants can also have violent adverse effects for some. In 2017, renowned researcher Peter C. Gøtzsche published findings in the BMJ of a review of 64,381 pages of clinical study reports (70 trials) obtained from the European Medicines Agency: “We showed for the first time that SSRIs in comparison with placebo increase aggression in children.” In a paper entitled, “Antidepressants and murder: case not closed,” he warned the adverse effects are not limited to children through young adults, stating that anxiety, agitation, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, hypomania, and mania, “have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants.”
Further, “It can no longer be doubted that antidepressants are dangerous and can cause suicide and homicide at any age.”[14]
More research from Sweden reveals that young adults between the ages of 15 and 24 who had filled prescriptions for antidepressants were more likely to be convicted of a homicide, assault, robbery, arson, kidnapping, sexual offense, or other violent crime when they were taking the medications than when they weren’t.[15]
Using Freedom of Information laws, BBC Panorama in England found 28 cases where antidepressants were implicated in a murder and 32 where users complained of murderous thoughts. The reports were made to the UK drugs watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.[16]
Researchers also took the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System and found that 25 psychotropic drugs, which included 11 antidepressants, had violence-related effects such as homicide, physical assaults, physical abuse, and homicidal ideation.[17]
CCHR’s report, Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide, records 32 cases of violent killings since the FDA warning in 2004, committed by children and young adults ages 12 to 24. Not all public reports specify the name of the psychiatric drug but of those that do, 14 reference antidepressants or drugs to treat depression. The youngest was aged 12 and was taking fluoxetine when he shot and killed a teacher and wounded two classmates.
Strike Three: Addiction and Withdrawal
It is now widely accepted that prolonged use of antidepressants can lead to withdrawal symptoms. A systematic review published in 2019 identified 14 studies that estimated that 27% to 86% (or a weighted average of 56%) of patients who stopped taking antidepressants experienced withdrawal effects. John Read, Ph.D., professor of clinical psychology at the University of East London, stated, “Withdrawal effects aren’t rare, they aren’t short-lived….”[18] Symptoms include headaches, vertigo, anxiety, depression and mood swings, electric shock sensations in the head known as “brain zaps,” problems with movement, lethargy, appetite changes, nightmares, hallucinations, and even homicidal and suicidal ideation.[19]
Jan Eastgate says, “It is astounding and egregious that children and teens are still being prescribed antidepressants that could drive some to commit suicide and murder. Add to this, parents who want to stop antidepressant use in their children can be faced with debilitating withdrawal effects. Consumers should never suddenly stop taking a prescription psychotropic drug but always seek medical assistance to wean off them safely.”
New Study Confirms Child and Youth Suicide Risk with Antidepressants
CCHR warns that 5.7 million 0-24-year-olds on antidepressants face increased suicide risks, as new study confirms.
In a new study published in Neuropsychopharmacology, researchers have found selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants increase the risk of suicide attempts threefold for those younger than 18 and up to twofold for those aged 18-24. The drugs had no preventative effect at any age, even for those at high risk of suicide.[1] Psychiatrists and doctors are taking enormous risks in continuing to prescribe these drugs to children, teens, and young adults, given long-term research findings. The IQVia Total Patient Tracker Database reports that in 2020, an estimated 5.7 million Americans ages 0-24 were prescribed antidepressants, of which 2.1 million were 17 or younger. More than 35,210 children were ages 5 or younger.[2]
The study was led by Tyra Lagerberg at the Karolinska Institutet, a medical university in Stockholm, Sweden. It found a higher risk of suicidal behavior in individuals under 25 treated with SSRIs after a depression diagnosis compared to untreated counterparts. “There is evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that antidepressant treatment increases risk of newly onset suicide attempts or ideation in children and adolescents.”[3]
Strike One: Suicide
Despite having evidence of the suicide risk in 1991, it took a 13-year campaign by parent groups, doctors, attorneys, and CCHR, to get the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2004 to add a black box suicide warning to antidepressants, initially for children and adolescents, and in 2007 expanded to include ages up to 24.
One would have expected a decline in their prescribing. A 2016 study published in the BMJ medical journal warned doctors to “avoid prescribing antidepressants to children and teenagers wherever possible because they are associated with a doubling in the risk of aggression and suicide.”[4]
However, profit—an estimated $28.6 billion in global antidepressant sales in 2020[5]—is a strong incentive for prescribers to ignore the warnings, Jan Eastgate, president of CCHR International, says.
Since the FDA warning, doctors and psychiatrists have continued to prescribe the powerful drugs to this age group. Indeed, the Neuropsychopharmacology study showed SSRI antidepressants are the first-line pharmacological treatment for depression and other so-called mental disorders. Furthermore, “the prevalence of antidepressant use in children and adolescents increased from 13 to 16% in the USA and from 07 to 11% in the United Kingdom in 2005–2012,” according to another study published in Frontiers Psychiatry in May 2022.[6]
That meta-analysis of antidepressant studies also confirmed that antidepressant exposure significantly increased the risk of suicide and suicide attempts when compared with no antidepressant usage among children and adolescents.[7]
In April this year, a University of East London study reviewed media reports on nearly 8,000 coroners’ inquests and found that antidepressants were linked to 2,718 cases of hanging, 933 overdose deaths, and 979 suicides.[8]
CCHR’s national Australian office obtained adverse event reports on psychiatric drugs from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), equivalent to the FDA, that reported suicides in children aged between 10 and 19 linked to antidepressants.[9]
CCHR has recorded cases such as a 14-year-old Irish boy who shot and killed himself after 46 days on fluoxetine (Prozac). His grieving mother said, “My son had no history of self-harm, depression or suicidal thoughts, he’d just had anxiety,” until prescribed the drug. The psychiatrist prescribed the antidepressant to “help” the teen “with his exams,” after seeing him for only 10 minutes, according to the mother.[10]
One parent leading the campaign to expose psychiatric drug suicide risks is Mathy Milling Downing, whose 12-year-old daughter, Candace, tragically took her own life four days after starting on an antidepressant also prescribed for exam anxiety.[11] Mrs. Downing is one of numerous mothers who speak candidly about being misinformed about antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs, with similar tragic results for their children. The mothers are part of CCHR’s must-see documentary for parents, Dead Wrong: How Psychiatric Drugs Can Kill Your Child.[12]
The documentary host, Celest Steubing, courageously speaks out about her 18-year-old son, Matthew, who parked his Ford pickup truck on an aging bridge, climbed the span’s superstructure, and jumped, killing himself from the fall. Matthew had been a vibrant kid, happy and full of life. But after a rough patch in his senior year of high school left him feeling down, a psychologist suggested he would benefit from the antidepressant Lexapro (escitalopram). He became withdrawn and anxious, which Celeste said led to his suicide just nine weeks after starting on the drug.[13]
Strike Two: Violence
Antidepressants can also have violent adverse effects for some. In 2017, renowned researcher Peter C. Gøtzsche published findings in the BMJ of a review of 64,381 pages of clinical study reports (70 trials) obtained from the European Medicines Agency: “We showed for the first time that SSRIs in comparison with placebo increase aggression in children.” In a paper entitled, “Antidepressants and murder: case not closed,” he warned the adverse effects are not limited to children through young adults, stating that anxiety, agitation, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, hypomania, and mania, “have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants.”
Further, “It can no longer be doubted that antidepressants are dangerous and can cause suicide and homicide at any age.”[14]
More research from Sweden reveals that young adults between the ages of 15 and 24 who had filled prescriptions for antidepressants were more likely to be convicted of a homicide, assault, robbery, arson, kidnapping, sexual offense, or other violent crime when they were taking the medications than when they weren’t.[15]
Using Freedom of Information laws, BBC Panorama in England found 28 cases where antidepressants were implicated in a murder and 32 where users complained of murderous thoughts. The reports were made to the UK drugs watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.[16]
Researchers also took the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System and found that 25 psychotropic drugs, which included 11 antidepressants, had violence-related effects such as homicide, physical assaults, physical abuse, and homicidal ideation.[17]
CCHR’s report, Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide, records 32 cases of violent killings since the FDA warning in 2004, committed by children and young adults ages 12 to 24. Not all public reports specify the name of the psychiatric drug but of those that do, 14 reference antidepressants or drugs to treat depression. The youngest was aged 12 and was taking fluoxetine when he shot and killed a teacher and wounded two classmates.
Strike Three: Addiction and Withdrawal
It is now widely accepted that prolonged use of antidepressants can lead to withdrawal symptoms. A systematic review published in 2019 identified 14 studies that estimated that 27% to 86% (or a weighted average of 56%) of patients who stopped taking antidepressants experienced withdrawal effects. John Read, Ph.D., professor of clinical psychology at the University of East London, stated, “Withdrawal effects aren’t rare, they aren’t short-lived….”[18] Symptoms include headaches, vertigo, anxiety, depression and mood swings, electric shock sensations in the head known as “brain zaps,” problems with movement, lethargy, appetite changes, nightmares, hallucinations, and even homicidal and suicidal ideation.[19]
Jan Eastgate says, “It is astounding and egregious that children and teens are still being prescribed antidepressants that could drive some to commit suicide and murder. Add to this, parents who want to stop antidepressant use in their children can be faced with debilitating withdrawal effects. Consumers should never suddenly stop taking a prescription psychotropic drug but always seek medical assistance to wean off them safely.”
"I went up to her room and I opened the door and she was hanging from her bed with her knees drawn up, and the first things I said to my husband is they (psychiatrists) have killed her"
Mathy Downing, whose 12-year-old daughter, Candace, tragically took her own life four days after starting on ZOLOFT - an antidepressant.
Join CCHR - Get the Facts - Fight Back
PSYCH DRUGS TURN KIDS INTO KILLERS
Eric Harris killed 12 students, a teacher and himself while taking the antidepressant LUXOR.
LUXOR says on its packet it can cause:
HOMICIDAL IDEATION
"Homicidal ideation" means LUXOR CAN CAUSE THOUGHTS OF MURDER.
8 million American kids are on psych drugs that state on their packets they can cause drug effects which can lead to violence. THIS is the reason there were more school shootings in 2025 than days in the school calendar.
Join CCHR - Get the facts - Fight Back!
Based on an analysis of international drug regulatory agency warnings, there are numerous, well-documented warnings indicating that psychiatric medications—particularly antidepressants, antipsychotics, and stimulants—are associated with adverse behavioral effects, including agitation, mania, hostility, and aggression, which can lead to suicidal ideation, suicide, and violent behavior.
Major regulatory bodies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have issued warnings on many of these drugs, including: Antidepressants (SSRIs/SNRIs):
In 2004, the FDA issued a "black box" warning—the strongest warning required—regarding increased suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children and adolescents, later expanding this to include young adults up to age 25. These warnings note risks of akathisia (extreme restlessness), agitation, hostility, and impulsivity.
Antipsychotics & Mood Stabilizers:
Warnings for these drugs frequently include risks of mania, psychosis, and severe behavioral changes.
Stimulants: Used for ADHD, these have also been associated with adverse reports of aggression and psychosis.
Key Findings on Regulatory Warnings:
Documented Dangers: A review of FDA data identified 31 drugs responsible for 78.8% of cases of violence toward others, with many antidepressants, ADHD, and sedative drugs listed.
Specific Symptoms: Many warnings specifically mention that these drugs can cause Akathisia (intense inner restlessness), which is closely associated with increased risk of violence and suicide.
Warnings and Documentation: International drug regulatory agencies, including in Canada, the UK, and Europe, have issued over 49 warnings (as noted in some analyses) regarding psychiatric drugs and risks of mania, hostility, and suicide.
Long-Term Concerns: The FDA has noted that suicidal behaviors can occur, particularly during the initial phase of treatment or following dose changes.
On November 7, 2007, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen walked into Jokela High School in Tuusula, Finland and opened fire. He killed eight people — six students, the school nurse, and the principal — and wounded at least ten others before shooting himself. He died from his wounds in hospital later that day.
He had been on SSRI antidepressants for approximately a year before the shooting.
________________________________________
The specific drug was never publicly named. What is confirmed by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation's official report is that Auvinen was prescribed SSRI antidepressants and took them irregularly for approximately a year leading up to the shooting.
SSRIs —carry the FDA's black box warning specifically targeting children, adolescents, and young adults for increased risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour. The warning was extended to cover young adults up to age 24 precisely because clinical trial data showed this age group was particularly vulnerable to the drugs' most dangerous effects.
The documented side effects of SSRIs in young people include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. Taking them irregularly — starting, stopping, starting again — exposes the brain to repeated abrupt changes in serotonin levels, compounding those risks.
An 18-year-old on SSRIs, taking them irregularly for a year. Eight people died. The drug question was never seriously raised. The specific drug was never publicly named.
It never is.
On February 14, 2008 — Valentine's Day — Steven Kazmierczak walked into Cole Hall at Northern Illinois University carrying a shotgun and three handguns. He opened fire on students attending an introductory oceanography class. He killed five students and wounded 21 others before shooting himself.
He had been prescribed three psychiatric drugs simultaneously by his psychiatrist: Prozac, Xanax, and Ambien.
His girlfriend Jessica Baty confirmed all three to CNN. Prozac — an antidepressant. Xanax — an anti-anxiety drug. Ambien — a sleep medication. All prescribed by the same psychiatrist. All being taken at the same time.
That combination is worth examining on its own terms — before any question of stopping or starting anything.
Prozac is an SSRI. The FDA's black box warning on SSRIs flags increased risk of suicidal thinking and violent behaviour specifically in young adults. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. These are not rare reactions — they are documented in the clinical trial data the manufacturer submitted to get the drug approved.
Xanax — alprazolam — is a benzodiazepine. The FDA's own labelling states it can cause a person to shed inhibitions. Documented side effects include disinhibition, impaired impulse control, and paradoxical reactions — where instead of producing calm, the drug produces agitation, hostility, and uninhibited behaviour.
Ambien — zolpidem — is a sedative hypnotic. Its label documents complex behavioural side effects including aggression, confusion, and in some patients a dissociative state where they carry out actions with no memory of them afterward.
Three drugs. Each carrying documented risks of aggression, disinhibition, or loss of impulse control.
All prescribed together.
By one psychiatrist.
NIU Police Chief Donald Grady confirmed that in the period before the shooting Kazmierczak was "behaving erratically — he was angry and more prone to outbursts." The autopsy confirmed Xanax was present in his bloodstream at the time of the shooting.
Five students went to an oceanography lecture on Valentine's Day and didn't come home. The three drugs prescribed to Kazmierczak by his psychiatrist — each documented to affect impulse control, aggression, and behaviour — were never seriously investigated as a contributing factor.
On February 14, 2008 — Valentine's Day — Steven Kazmierczak walked into Cole Hall at Northern Illinois University carrying a shotgun and three handguns. He opened fire on students attending an introductory oceanography class. He killed five students and wounded 21 others before shooting himself.
He had been prescribed three psychiatric drugs simultaneously by his psychiatrist: Prozac, Xanax, and Ambien.
His girlfriend Jessica Baty confirmed all three to CNN. Prozac — an antidepressant. Xanax — an anti-anxiety drug. Ambien — a sleep medication. All prescribed by the same psychiatrist. All being taken at the same time.
That combination is worth examining on its own terms — before any question of stopping or starting anything.
Prozac is an SSRI. The FDA's black box warning on SSRIs flags increased risk of suicidal thinking and violent behaviour specifically in young adults. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. These are not rare reactions — they are documented in the clinical trial data the manufacturer submitted to get the drug approved.
Xanax — alprazolam — is a benzodiazepine. The FDA's own labelling states it can cause a person to shed inhibitions. Documented side effects include disinhibition, impaired impulse control, and paradoxical reactions — where instead of producing calm, the drug produces agitation, hostility, and uninhibited behaviour.
Ambien — zolpidem — is a sedative hypnotic. Its label documents complex behavioural side effects including aggression, confusion, and in some patients a dissociative state where they carry out actions with no memory of them afterward.
Three drugs. Each carrying documented risks of aggression, disinhibition, or loss of impulse control.
All prescribed together.
By one psychiatrist.
NIU Police Chief Donald Grady confirmed that in the period before the shooting Kazmierczak was "behaving erratically — he was angry and more prone to outbursts." The autopsy confirmed Xanax was present in his bloodstream at the time of the shooting.
Five students went to an oceanography lecture on Valentine's Day and didn't come home. The three drugs prescribed to Kazmierczak by his psychiatrist — each documented to affect impulse control, aggression, and behaviour — were never seriously investigated as a contributing factor.
Cynthia Schilf took her 16-year-old son Peter to see their family doctor in South Dakota. Peter had been experiencing symptoms of depression for several months. Dr. Richard Briggs diagnosed him with depression and gave him samples of Cymbalta — a brand new antidepressant that Eli Lilly had just received FDA approval to market.
The samples had been removed from their packaging. There was no warning information of any kind.
Within a day, Peter and his father searched the internet for information about Cymbalta and found Eli Lilly's own website. The suicide risk was not listed there. It couldn't be — Cymbalta had only just received FDA approval and the black box warning had not yet been mandated.
Lilly knew about five suicides in their own clinical trials. That information was not on their website. It was not in the doctor's briefing. It was nowhere a family could find it.
Peter's father testified that if he had seen a warning about suicidality, he would not have allowed Peter to take the drug.
On December 24, 2004 — Christmas Eve — Peter Schilf shot himself.
He had been on Cymbalta for four weeks.
One month after Peter died, Eli Lilly revised the Cymbalta label to include the FDA black box warning about suicide.
One month. Peter Schilf was dead. Then they added the warning.
The prescribing doctor told the Schilf family that no completed suicides had occurred during Cymbalta's clinical trials. He was wrong.
There had been five completed suicides in Lilly-sponsored clinical trials of Cymbalta.
Five.
That information had not been disclosed to the doctor. He chose Cymbalta in part because he believed it was less linked to suicide than other antidepressants.
He had been given a false picture.
Cymbalta — duloxetine — is an antidepressant. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, hallucinations, and suicidal behaviour.
The FDA black box warning on all antidepressants specifically flags children and adolescents for the highest risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour — and flags the first weeks of treatment as the most dangerous window.
Peter Schilf was 16.
He was given the drug as samples with no warning information. His father researched it and found nothing on Lilly's website to concern him. The doctor who prescribed it had been told five suicides had not occurred in clinical trials when they had.
Everyone in this chain was working from false or missing information. Eli Lilly was the one who had the real information.
They chose not to share it.
The drug remains on the market. Cymbalta is one of the most widely prescribed antidepressants in the world.
London Gadd was 12 when she used psych drugs to kill herself after her psychiatrist prescribed her Prozac.
Prozac says on its packet it can cause suicidal thoughts and actions, especially in children.
London's mother, Charay Gadd, who is campaigning for antidepressants to be banned for children, said:
"You don't even allow them to vote because of their brain development and things like that, or drink alcohol and make these judgments, but you're putting them on brain-altering medications at 12 years old."
Dead Wrong - How psychiatric drugs can kill your child
Behind the grim statistics of deaths, suicides, birth defects and serious adverse reactions is the human face of this global drugging epidemic—the personal stories of loss and courage of those who paid the real price.
From the makers of the award-winning documentaries Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging and The Marketing of Madness: Are We All Insane? comes a searing new documentary, exposing how devastating—and deadly—psychiatric drugs can be for children and families.
Once you hear what eight brave mothers, their families, health experts, drug counselors and doctors have to say instead, you will come away convinced of one thing…
Psychiatrists are DEAD WRONG.
At the age of eighteen, Celeste’s son Matthew committed suicide—after eight weeks on a psychiatric drug.
Like so many others, Celeste believed the psychiatrists’ claims, the drug maker’s advertising. She listened to the “experts”.
“Yet, had we been told the truth about the dangerous effects of psychiatric drug our son was given,” she says, “he would be alive today.”
Watch the free online documentary DEAD WRONG - HOW PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS CAN KILL YOUR CHILD - by clicking the link in our comments now.
.jpg)
CCHR Traveling Exhibit Exposes Psychiatric Violations of Human Rights
Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Traveling Exhibit—psychiatry must cease coercive and dangerous practices in the field of mental health.
Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) toured more than a thousand visitors through the Psychiatry an Industry of Death Exhibit in Anaheim, California, as part of its nationwide tour. The exhibit reveals the history and extent of human rights abuse in the field of psychiatry, which continues unabated today. Graphic panels and documentary footage depict the industry’s concerted campaign to redefine mankind as animals, justifying brutal and deadly “treatments,” such as lobotomy and electroconvulsive treatment (ECT).
Visitors to the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Exhibit were shocked to learn the relationship between the increase in administering harmful psychiatric drugs to children and spiking child violence, school shootings, and suicides among youth.
Visitors to the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Exhibit were shocked to learn about the link between the rise in harmful psychiatric drug use among children and increasing child violence, school shootings, and suicides.
Visitors discovered the devastating consequences of the widespread drugging of populations with psychotropic drugs. Graphic panels revealed the undeniable correlation between the drugging of school children and the epidemic of school shootings, violence, and suicides among young people.
Visitors expressed outrage over coercive, inhumane treatments and their devastating effects, emphasizing the urgent need to take action to protect themselves and their families.
For more information, visit the CCHR website, or watch documentaries on the work of CCHR in countries around the world and the film Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.
Psychiatrist Brett Negin added Clonidine to Nik Cruz's other two psych prescriptions, seeing him just 6 months before Cruz killed 17 people. Clonidine states on its packet that it can cause mania, hallucinations, new or worsening psychosis, aggression and hostility. Should the psych Brett Negin be held responsible for the murders?
Parents Warn of Possible Psychiatric Drug Dangers
Darkness hung over Charleston Harbor as Matthew Steubing parked his Ford pickup truck on the aging bridge and left a note on the seat beside his Bible. He put on a life jacket and began to climb — up, up, into the span’s superstructure. Then, he jumped.
His parents were waiting for Matthew to arrive home in Winchester, Va., when they received the news on July 18, 2003. Their 18-year-old son plunged more than 160 feet from the Silas Pearman Bridge before slamming into the Cooper River. He was gone.
“Our world blew apart,” his mother, Celeste Steubing, said. “We couldn’t imagine this happening because this wasn’t Matthew. … It made no sense.” Matthew, the youngest of six children, had been a vibrant kid, happy and full of life. But after a rough patch in his senior year of high school left him feeling down, a psychologist suggested he would benefit from the antidepressant drug Lexapro.
He soon became withdrawn and anxious, his parents recalled during a recent visit to Charleston. Matthew committed suicide just nine weeks after starting on the drug.
Only later did his family learn that antidepressants carry a heightened risk of suicide in children, the Steubings said. The Steubings have made it their mission to warn other parents about the hidden dangers of psychiatric drugs.
To that end, Celeste Steubing was featured in the recently released documentary, “Dead Wrong,” produced by the Los Angeles-based Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
On April 24, 2008, 17-year-old Jesse Carrizales walked onto the grounds of Roosevelt High School in Fresno, California, approached the school's police officer from behind, and hit him in the head with a baseball bat. The officer, Junus Perry, was knocked to the ground. Fearing for his life, he shot Carrizales. The teenager was dead within minutes — a bullet had damaged an artery.
Carrizales had been prescribed Lexapro and Geodon. His autopsy showed he had a high dose of Lexapro in his blood. The coroner stated that level of Lexapro in his system could have caused him to be paranoid.
Lexapro — escitalopram — is an SSRI antidepressant. Geodon — ziprasidone — is an antipsychotic. Two powerful psychiatric drugs.
Lexapro's own label lists paranoia, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour as documented side effects. The FDA's black box warning on SSRIs specifically flags children and adolescents for increased risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour. The coroner's finding — that the high dose of Lexapro in Carrizales's blood could have caused paranoia — is entirely consistent with what the drug's own label warns about.
Geodon carries its own black box warning. It is documented to cause agitation, aggression, and in some patients a severe restlessness that can drive impulsive behaviour.
Prescribing it alongside an SSRI like Lexapro is specifically flagged as not recommended by drug interaction databases — the combination increases the risk of a serious and potentially life-threatening irregular heart rhythm.
Two drugs. Prescribed together. A combination that drug safety databases flag as dangerous.
The autopsy didn't just confirm the drugs were there. It confirmed the dose of one of them was high enough that the coroner flagged it as a potential cause of the paranoid behaviour that ended with a police officer on the ground and a teenager dead.
NHS Billions Fund Deadly Care in For-Profit Mental Health Hospitals
The NHS spent nearly $3 billion last year outsourcing psychiatric care to for-profit private hospitals like Priory—where patients are dying from abuse, neglect and chemical restraint.
By Logan H. Merrill in Freedom Magazine
If megabucks is your fondest wish, choose the life of a private mental health clinic provider. Of course, you must pawn your principles, sell your soul, trash your morals and humanity and maintain a regiment of attorneys. But consider the benefits:
In the past year, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) spent over £2 billion (nearly $3 billion) to send patients to private hospitals. The Priory Group was the main beneficiary of the bounty, pocketing—together with Cygnet, another private provider giant—over 68 percent.
The NHS pays these private, for-profit providers nearly £800 (over $1,000) per day per patient, totaling about £300,000 (nearly $400,000) annually for just one bed. Private providers like Priory are delighted to offer as many beds as needed to help the NHS through its current crisis—an unprecedented demand in the UK for mental health care. For-profit providers like Priory have, accordingly, doubled the available beds for patients during the same period that NHS-provided beds have halved.
It’s a cushy setup.
A healthcare assistant entered, found her hanging, then left her on the floor for 10 minutes before a doctor arrived and began CPR.
And what do the people of the UK get in exchange?
Suicides, for one. Criminal negligence, abuse, trauma and overall corruption for another.
The litany of deaths at Priory facilities is long. And, according to a Times of London investigation, it has been gaining momentum since 2017. In 2021, Priory’s sugar daddy, NHS England, complained that, despite two years of meetings, the provider had failed to change its ways.
Someone once said that if you do the same thing for at least 21 days, it should no longer be a challenge. It will become a habit.
In that case, the Priory Group has long since made death within its portals a habit. In 2022 alone, the UK’s watchdog Care Quality Commission (CQC) reported that Priory faced scrutiny for at least 30 deaths.
The fruits of Priory’s “habit” are plenty; the lives unnecessarily snuffed out due to negligence or abuse are too numerous to catalog.
There were, however, a few times worthy of mention where justice was served—albeit too little and far too late.
30 deaths at Priory in 2022 alone statistic
Like the death of 14-year-old Amy El-Keria in 2012. She was restrained many times and repeatedly subjected to chemical injections against her will. When staff found her door locked, they had no key. A healthcare assistant entered, found her hanging, then left her on the floor for 10 minutes before a doctor arrived and began CPR. No one accompanied her in the ambulance. No one informed the family until many hours later.
It took four years for an inquest jury to find that gross negligence contributed to Amy’s death and another three before Priory was fined £300,000—or the amount that NHS pays them for one patient bed for a year. It was the first such prosecution and enforced accountability of a private mental health provider.
Priory paid the fine but refused to accept that it had anything to do with Amy’s death.
“Amy loved life, and I know she wanted to live. That her precious life should have ended in a place so devoid of care is something that will forever haunt me,” Amy’s mother, Tania, said. “This whole painful process has been marked by Priory’s long and bitter failure to show any level of remorse or acceptance of responsibility.”
Well, no one expects you to be responsible for a habit. You do it and do it, again and again…
Like the case of the father of three who killed himself in September 2020 after hearing voices and becoming fearful at the thought of being discharged. The Priory doctor waved it off, saying the patient was faking being sick, “malingering” so as to get a nicer room. The coroner said the case was “one of the worst examples of care provided to a vulnerable, mentally ill patient” and that the care he received was “seriously flawed.”
Or the three young women who died within two months of each other at the same Priory facility in 2022.
In the first death, the coroner found that the hospital had so drugged the patient it resulted in a profound and deep sedative effect that suppressed her gag reflex, causing her stomach contents to go into her lungs, effectively killing her. After the second death, the coroner issued a Prevention of Future Deaths Order, urging that action should be taken to prevent future fatalities.
The jury in the coroner’s inquest found that the third death was “contributed to by neglect” by the hospital and that “serious inconsistencies existed across all levels of management in relation to her care plan,” resulting in the “inadequate care of a highly vulnerable patient.”
The following year, a fourth woman died at the same hospital.
It’s tough to break a habit.
“The NHS doesn’t really want to know too much about what is happening in Priory hospitals because they’d then have to do something about it.”
In fact, breaking the habit often takes an intervention from those who know the addict most intimately—in this case, Priory’s former patients, who are part of the advocacy group Mad Youth Organize.
The Mad Youth Organize campaign’s slogan says it all: “WE GET SICK—THEY GET RICH!”
“We’re done with empty mental health ‘awareness’ campaigns,” their website declares. “We want to hold the institutions and executives who profit from our misery to account.” The way to do that, the group explains, is to “decommodify the services that we rely on for life and that give us our human rights,” and that includes shutting down for-profit mental “health” monoliths like Priory Group.
One of Mad Youth Organize’s members, known to us as “Hannah” but known to her handlers as “Room Number Nine,” spoke of the dehumanizing experience of being addressed as a number and not a person, never being allowed outside and being force-fed and drugged without consent or compassion. “Within those walls, you’re just a diagnosis—they don’t see you as a person with a life … and when you’re in there for so long, you start to believe it, too.”
Another organizer, “May,” was told by a psychiatrist that she would never leave the hospital. At age 17, “I was told I would die in a unit, that I had no chance in the outside world.” (Spoiler alert: she made it in the outside world.)
“Rosie,” who once had the goal of a career in mental health, found that world a nightmare. Left on a mattress in a darkened room and suddenly attacked by another patient, she was told that if she didn’t stop screaming, she would be put in solitary. “Patients in psychiatric hospitals are punished, sedated, restrained and forgotten,” she says. “The general public needs to be made aware of what goes on behind the walls that hold some of the most vulnerable people in society. Let’s talk about the systematic abuse of mental health patients. Let’s talk about what actually happens when you ask for help. Let’s demand a radical change.”
Radical change is indeed the only cure for the mockery of care that one of Priory’s own doctors described as an “utter shambles.”
Last year, the Priory Group outdid itself. It was fined £650,000—its biggest criminal penalty yet—for the death of 23-year-old Matthew Caseby, who escaped from the Priory Hospital Woodbourne in Birmingham in 2020 and later died after being hit by a train.
After the sentencing, Matthew’s dad, Richard Caseby, described Priory as a “calculating, cruel and fundamentally dangerous company.”
Mr. Caseby did not confine his bitterness to Priory, but included their prime funder as well, comparing the NHS to “a crack addict” when it comes to private providers. “It outsources the most vulnerable people into Priory hospitals, even when that care is rated as being inadequate,” he said. “The NHS doesn’t really want to know too much about what is happening in Priory hospitals because they’d then have to do something about it.”
Defending the NHS earlier this year, UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said, “The independent healthcare sector isn’t going anywhere, and it can help us out of the hole we’re in. We would be mad not to.”
The Center for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI), an independent think tank which monitors the NHS, called Mr. Streeting’s statement “utter nonsense.”
CHPI’s precise and succinct analysis sums up our feelings as well. But we are moved to add that the NHS’ so-called “monetary support” of private for-profit providers like Priory qualifies NHS to be classified as something else entirely: an accessory to the crime.
On April 24, 2008, 17-year-old Jesse Carrizales walked onto the grounds of Roosevelt High School in Fresno, California, approached the school's police officer from behind, and hit him in the head with a baseball bat. The officer, Junus Perry, was knocked to the ground. Fearing for his life, he shot Carrizales. The teenager was dead within minutes — a bullet had damaged an artery.
Carrizales had been prescribed Lexapro and Geodon. His autopsy showed he had a high dose of Lexapro in his blood. The coroner stated that level of Lexapro in his system could have caused him to be paranoid.
Lexapro — escitalopram — is an SSRI antidepressant. Geodon — ziprasidone — is an antipsychotic. Two powerful psychiatric drugs.
Lexapro's own label lists paranoia, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour as documented side effects. The FDA's black box warning on SSRIs specifically flags children and adolescents for increased risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour. The coroner's finding — that the high dose of Lexapro in Carrizales's blood could have caused paranoia — is entirely consistent with what the drug's own label warns about.
Geodon carries its own black box warning. It is documented to cause agitation, aggression, and in some patients a severe restlessness that can drive impulsive behaviour.
Prescribing it alongside an SSRI like Lexapro is specifically flagged as not recommended by drug interaction databases — the combination increases the risk of a serious and potentially life-threatening irregular heart rhythm.
Two drugs. Prescribed together. A combination that drug safety databases flag as dangerous.
The autopsy didn't just confirm the drugs were there. It confirmed the dose of one of them was high enough that the coroner flagged it as a potential cause of the paranoid behaviour that ended with a police officer on the ground and a teenager dead.
On April 24, 2008, 17-year-old Jesse Carrizales walked onto the grounds of Roosevelt High School in Fresno, California, approached the school's police officer from behind, and hit him in the head with a baseball bat. The officer, Junus Perry, was knocked to the ground. Fearing for his life, he shot Carrizales. The teenager was dead within minutes — a bullet had damaged an artery.
Carrizales had been prescribed Lexapro and Geodon. His autopsy showed he had a high dose of Lexapro in his blood. The coroner stated that level of Lexapro in his system could have caused him to be paranoid.
Lexapro — escitalopram — is an SSRI antidepressant. Geodon — ziprasidone — is an antipsychotic. Two powerful psychiatric drugs.
Lexapro's own label lists paranoia, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour as documented side effects. The FDA's black box warning on SSRIs specifically flags children and adolescents for increased risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour. The coroner's finding — that the high dose of Lexapro in Carrizales's blood could have caused paranoia — is entirely consistent with what the drug's own label warns about.
Geodon carries its own black box warning. It is documented to cause agitation, aggression, and in some patients a severe restlessness that can drive impulsive behaviour.
Prescribing it alongside an SSRI like Lexapro is specifically flagged as not recommended by drug interaction databases — the combination increases the risk of a serious and potentially life-threatening irregular heart rhythm.
Two drugs. Prescribed together. A combination that drug safety databases flag as dangerous.
The autopsy didn't just confirm the drugs were there. It confirmed the dose of one of them was high enough that the coroner flagged it as a potential cause of the paranoid behaviour that ended with a police officer on the ground and a teenager dead.
Michelle David was a former cheerleader for the Philadelphia 76ers. She came from a large family. Not a single baby born into that family had ever had a heart problem. She had no reason to think her son would be any different.
She had been taking Paxil for mild anxiety and panic attacks. Her doctor didn't tell her it could harm her baby. The FDA hadn't warned about it. As far as Michelle knew, she was taking a medication that had been thoroughly tested and approved.
Lyam Kilker was born with two holes in his heart and an undeveloped aorta. He was diagnosed two weeks after birth. He was hospitalised for several months. Within six months of being born he had undergone multiple open-heart surgeries. He will require more surgeries as he grows.
In October 2009, after a month-long trial in Philadelphia, a jury took just seven hours to decide. By a 10-2 margin they found that GlaxoSmithKline — Paxil's manufacturer — had negligently failed to warn Michelle's doctor about the drug's risks and that Paxil was a factual cause of Lyam's heart defects.
They awarded the family $2.5 million — more than double the $1.2 million the family had sought. It was the first verdict in more than 600 pending Paxil birth defect lawsuits against GSK.
"We were just hoping and praying that the jury saw what we knew to be true," Michelle David said after the verdict.
What the trial revealed about what GlaxoSmithKline knew — and when — is the real story.
The family's attorneys produced documents showing GSK had buried negative test results about Paxil and birth defects. The company had likely been aware of the risk as early as 1980. In 1997 — eight years before the FDA finally reclassified Paxil as carrying evidence of fetal risk — a GSK executive named Bonnie Rossello wrote a memo about the company's planned testing. The memo read: "If neg, results can bury."
If negative. Bury the results.
The jury heard that. It took them seven hours.
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. It was approved by the FDA in 1992. For over a decade after its approval, the FDA classified it as having no known connections to birth defects. Doctors prescribed it to pregnant women. Women took it trusting their doctors. Babies were born with holes in their hearts.
In 2005 — thirteen years after Paxil was approved — the FDA reclassified it as carrying evidence of human fetal risk. Studies had linked first-trimester Paxil exposure to a significantly increased risk of congenital heart defects. Atrial septal defects. Ventricular septal defects. Tetralogy of Fallot. Right and left ventricular outflow tract obstructions. The list is long and the defects are serious.
GSK had known since at least 1980 that there were reasons for concern. They buried the results. They sold $942 million worth of Paxil in 2008 alone.
Following the Kilker verdict, GSK settled more than 800 additional birth defect lawsuits within the year — at an average of $1.2 million per case. Over $1 billion in total. They paid it quietly. Paxil stayed on the market.
Michelle David was a former cheerleader for the Philadelphia 76ers. She came from a large family. Not a single baby born into that family had ever had a heart problem. She had no reason to think her son would be any different.
She had been taking Paxil for mild anxiety and panic attacks. Her doctor didn't tell her it could harm her baby. The FDA hadn't warned about it. As far as Michelle knew, she was taking a medication that had been thoroughly tested and approved.
Lyam Kilker was born with two holes in his heart and an undeveloped aorta. He was diagnosed two weeks after birth. He was hospitalised for several months. Within six months of being born he had undergone multiple open-heart surgeries. He will require more surgeries as he grows.
In October 2009, after a month-long trial in Philadelphia, a jury took just seven hours to decide. By a 10-2 margin they found that GlaxoSmithKline — Paxil's manufacturer — had negligently failed to warn Michelle's doctor about the drug's risks and that Paxil was a factual cause of Lyam's heart defects.
They awarded the family $2.5 million — more than double the $1.2 million the family had sought. It was the first verdict in more than 600 pending Paxil birth defect lawsuits against GSK.
"We were just hoping and praying that the jury saw what we knew to be true," Michelle David said after the verdict.
What the trial revealed about what GlaxoSmithKline knew — and when — is the real story.
The family's attorneys produced documents showing GSK had buried negative test results about Paxil and birth defects. The company had likely been aware of the risk as early as 1980. In 1997 — eight years before the FDA finally reclassified Paxil as carrying evidence of fetal risk — a GSK executive named Bonnie Rossello wrote a memo about the company's planned testing. The memo read: "If neg, results can bury."
If negative. Bury the results.
The jury heard that. It took them seven hours.
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. It was approved by the FDA in 1992. For over a decade after its approval, the FDA classified it as having no known connections to birth defects. Doctors prescribed it to pregnant women. Women took it trusting their doctors. Babies were born with holes in their hearts.
In 2005 — thirteen years after Paxil was approved — the FDA reclassified it as carrying evidence of human fetal risk. Studies had linked first-trimester Paxil exposure to a significantly increased risk of congenital heart defects. Atrial septal defects. Ventricular septal defects. Tetralogy of Fallot. Right and left ventricular outflow tract obstructions. The list is long and the defects are serious.
GSK had known since at least 1980 that there were reasons for concern. They buried the results. They sold $942 million worth of Paxil in 2008 alone.
Following the Kilker verdict, GSK settled more than 800 additional birth defect lawsuits within the year — at an average of $1.2 million per case. Over $1 billion in total. They paid it quietly. Paxil stayed on the market.
Michelle David was a former cheerleader for the Philadelphia 76ers. She came from a large family. Not a single baby born into that family had ever had a heart problem. She had no reason to think her son would be any different.
She had been taking Paxil for mild anxiety and panic attacks. Her doctor didn't tell her it could harm her baby. The FDA hadn't warned about it. As far as Michelle knew, she was taking a medication that had been thoroughly tested and approved.
Lyam Kilker was born with two holes in his heart and an undeveloped aorta. He was diagnosed two weeks after birth. He was hospitalised for several months. Within six months of being born he had undergone multiple open-heart surgeries. He will require more surgeries as he grows.
In October 2009, after a month-long trial in Philadelphia, a jury took just seven hours to decide. By a 10-2 margin they found that GlaxoSmithKline — Paxil's manufacturer — had negligently failed to warn Michelle's doctor about the drug's risks and that Paxil was a factual cause of Lyam's heart defects.
They awarded the family $2.5 million — more than double the $1.2 million the family had sought. It was the first verdict in more than 600 pending Paxil birth defect lawsuits against GSK.
"We were just hoping and praying that the jury saw what we knew to be true," Michelle David said after the verdict.
What the trial revealed about what GlaxoSmithKline knew — and when — is the real story.
The family's attorneys produced documents showing GSK had buried negative test results about Paxil and birth defects. The company had likely been aware of the risk as early as 1980. In 1997 — eight years before the FDA finally reclassified Paxil as carrying evidence of fetal risk — a GSK executive named Bonnie Rossello wrote a memo about the company's planned testing. The memo read: "If neg, results can bury."
If negative. Bury the results.
The jury heard that. It took them seven hours.
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. It was approved by the FDA in 1992. For over a decade after its approval, the FDA classified it as having no known connections to birth defects. Doctors prescribed it to pregnant women. Women took it trusting their doctors. Babies were born with holes in their hearts.
In 2005 — thirteen years after Paxil was approved — the FDA reclassified it as carrying evidence of human fetal risk. Studies had linked first-trimester Paxil exposure to a significantly increased risk of congenital heart defects. Atrial septal defects. Ventricular septal defects. Tetralogy of Fallot. Right and left ventricular outflow tract obstructions. The list is long and the defects are serious.
GSK had known since at least 1980 that there were reasons for concern. They buried the results. They sold $942 million worth of Paxil in 2008 alone.
Following the Kilker verdict, GSK settled more than 800 additional birth defect lawsuits within the year — at an average of $1.2 million per case. Over $1 billion in total. They paid it quietly. Paxil stayed on the market.
On February 5, 2010, 15-year-old Hammad Memon shot and killed his classmate Todd Brown at Discovery Middle School in Huntsville, Alabama. Brown was shot in the back of the head during a class change.
Memon walked into a nearby bathroom afterward, laid the gun and the bullets down next to the sink, and waited.
He was on Zoloft and Strattera. And the person who had prescribed them to him was his own father.
Court documents filed in Madison County revealed the full picture. Memon had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression. He had been prescribed two drugs: Zoloft, an antidepressant, and Strattera, a non-stimulant ADHD medication. A letter from Decatur General Hospital confirmed to the court that both medications had been given to him by his father — Dr. Iqbal Memon, a physician. The court subsequently issued an order barring Dr. Memon from prescribing or furnishing any medication to his son.
That a doctor had been medicating his own child — a child who then killed a classmate — was barely a footnote in the coverage of this case.
Zoloft is an SSRI. It carries the FDA's black box warning for increased risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour in children and adolescents. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour — the same profile that appears on every antidepressant label in this class.
Strattera — atomoxetine — is prescribed for ADHD. Its documented side effects include aggressive behaviour, hostility, irritability, and emotional instability. The WAFF court documents noted explicitly that Strattera's listed potential side effects include violent behaviour.
Two drugs. Both carrying black box warnings. Both documented to cause aggression and violent behaviour in young people. Both prescribed to the same 15-year-old — by his father — who then shot a classmate in the back of the head.
Stephen Paddock killed 59, including himself, and wounded more than 500 in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
He had been taking Valium (diazepam) for years and had it in his urine at the time of the murders.
Valium's packet insert states withdrawal from Valium can cause aggression, perceptual distortions, depersonalization, hallucinations, aggression, paranoid thoughts and rage.
Stephen Paddock killed 59, including himself, and wounded more than 500 in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
He had been taking Valium (diazepam) for years and had it in his urine at the time of the murders.
Valium's packet insert states withdrawal from Valium can cause aggression, perceptual distortions, depersonalization, hallucinations, aggression, paranoid thoughts and rage.
PSYCH DRUGS TURN KIDS TO KILLERS
Dylann Storm Roof, who murdered 9 people in the Charleston church shooting, took the psych drugs Xanax and Suboxone, which state on their labels they can cause:
-Psychosis
-Mania/Hypomania
-Rage
-Aggressive or hostile behavior
-Depersonalization
-Euphoria
-Hallucinations and behavioral changes
Stop giving kids psych drugs that can turn them into killers.
Get the facts - fight back - Join CCHR
Psychiatry provided the foundational scientific and ethical framework for the Holocaust through the theory of eugenics and racial hygiene, and later directly implemented the mass murder programs that served as the blueprint for the extermination camps.
Psychiatrists proposed the extermination of patients well before Hitler rose to power. Their theories provided the "scientific" justification for Nazi racial policies:
In 1920, psychiatrist Alfred Hoche and jurist Karl Binding published Permission for the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life, which argued that killing the "incurably insane" was a compassionate and economically necessary act.
Leaders like Ernst Rüdin pioneered the idea that mental illness was purely hereditary and that the gene pool must be "purified" to prevent "racial degeneration".
These theories applied scientifically invalid conclusions from evolutionary biology (neo-Darwinism) to human society, categorizing people as "fit" or "unfit" based on perceived genetic worth.
Psychiatry was the first medical discipline to systematically murder its patients, a process that later expanded into the Holocaust:
Following the 1933 "Hereditary Health Law" (co-authored by Rüdin), psychiatrists identified and authorized the forced sterilisation of approximately 400,000 individuals labeled as mentally or physically "defective".
In 1939, psychiatrists organized and led the systematic gassing of adult mental patients at six dedicated killing centers. They:
Psychiatrists evaluated patient questionnaires to select those who could not work and were thus "useless eaters".
Psychiatrists operated gas chambers disguised as showers—the same technology later used in death camps.
Psychiatrists signed thousands of fake death certificates to deceive families.
The T4 program provided the training, personnel, and technology for the larger extermination camps. For example, Dr. Imfried Eberl, the only physician to command an extermination camp (Treblinka), was a psychiatrist promoted for his "efficiency" in the T4 euthanasia centers.
Under program 14f13, T4 psychiatrists traveled to concentration camps to select "unfit" or "insane" prisoners for transport to psychiatric gassing facilities.
Medical observers at the Nuremberg trials later concluded that the Holocaust likely could not have occurred without the active involvement and theoretical "legitimacy" provided by psychiatry.
While Zoloft (sertraline) has a potential link to increased aggression, agitation, and violent behavior.
Key Findings Regarding Zoloft and Violence:
Warning Signs: Official Zoloft Safety Information warns that patients, especially early in treatment or after dose changes, may experience new or worse irritability, acting aggressive, being angry, or violent.
Agitation and Akathisia:
Studies suggest that SSRIs like Zoloft can cause akathisia (a state of extreme restlessness) and agitation, which are recognized factors that can lead to both suicide and violence.
Case Studies/Data: A 2001 report mentioned a study linking SSRIs to agitation that could lead to violence, with expert testimony in a specific lawsuit claiming that sertraline was associated with severe, acute suicidal behavior.
Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of a prescription stimulant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms or other complications.
Oliver McGowan was 18 years old. He had epilepsy and learning difficulties, and by every account was a natural leader full of life. His mother Paula described him as someone who "always saw the best in everything and everyone" and who "taught all of us how to look at things differently."
On October 22, 2016, Oliver was admitted to Southmead Hospital in Bristol after a seizure that wouldn't stop with his regular medication. His parents Tom and Paula were at his side. They told the doctors, clearly and repeatedly, that Oliver was not to be given antipsychotic medication under any circumstances. He had reacted badly to it before.
On October 25 — three days after admission — a doctor prescribed him Olanzapine. An antipsychotic. Without the knowledge of Oliver's parents.
Oliver McGowan died on November 11, 2016. He was 18 years old.
________________________________________
The inquest into his death was unambiguous on one point: the Olanzapine caused it. The drug triggered a rare but documented condition called Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome — a potentially fatal reaction to antipsychotic medication characterised by high fever, severe muscle rigidity, altered consciousness, and organ failure. Oliver's brain swelled so severely it was coming out of the base of his skull. He never recovered.
Olanzapine — sold under the brand name Zyprexa — is an atypical antipsychotic. Its FDA label and equivalent UK drug safety documentation carry explicit warnings about Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome as a known and potentially fatal adverse reaction. The drug is documented to cause NMS in a percentage of patients — unpredictably, rapidly, and fatally. The risk is well known. It is on the label.
But Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome is only one item on Olanzapine's documented list of serious adverse effects. The full picture of what this drug can do is worth reading in full.
Clinical trials have documented substantial and rapid weight gain as one of Olanzapine's most consistent effects, with studies showing average gains of over 5kg in shorter treatment periods and over 11kg in longer ones. It causes diabetes and serious metabolic disruption. It causes tardive dyskinesia — a potentially permanent movement disorder characterised by repetitive, involuntary movements of the face and body that can be irreversible even after stopping the drug. It causes a dangerous drop in blood pressure. It causes seizures. It causes high fever and muscle rigidity — which is NMS, the condition that killed Oliver. It is documented to cause serious skin reactions including DRESS — Drug Reaction with Eosinophilia and Systemic Symptoms — a multi-organ failure condition that can destroy the liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart and can be fatal. It causes elevated prolactin levels leading to reproductive and bone damage. It carries a black box warning for increased risk of death in elderly patients with dementia.
And it causes — documented on its own FDA label — agitation, hostility, akathisia, and emotional instability in the patients it is supposed to be calming.
This is the drug that Oliver's parents told the doctors not to give him. This is the drug they prescribed him anyway.
________________________________________
Oliver's parents had told the doctors about his previous bad reaction to antipsychotics. That history — that specific warning from the people who knew him best — was ignored.
During the inquest, the doctor who had prescribed the Olanzapine — Dr Monica Mohan — was asked about her decision. She said: "I would do it again."
I would do it again. After a family had watched their son die from a drug they had expressly forbidden. After an inquest had confirmed the drug caused the condition that killed him. After Oliver's parents had sat in that courtroom for days reliving every detail of what happened to their child.
I would do it again.
Paula McGowan responded to the inquest's conclusion — which found the care "appropriate" — with a statement that should be read carefully: "We remain adamant that Oliver would not have died if he had not been administered the Olanzapine, which we expressly forbade. We sadly still consider that the doctors who treated Oliver were arrogant and dismissive of Oliver's particular needs."
The coroner made no recommendations to prevent future deaths.
________________________________________
Oliver McGowan's death became a catalyst. His mother Paula has since campaigned relentlessly for mandatory training for NHS staff on learning disability and autism — the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training programme, named in his memory, is now being rolled out across the NHS. It exists because a doctor gave an 18-year-old a drug his parents had forbidden, and then said she would do it again.
Nothing will bring Oliver back. The training programme bearing his name is the only thing that came from it.
"I took (my son) Jason to see a psychiatrist and after one or two meetings he was prescribed antidepressants and a drug for ADHD - Adderall.
Immediately, within a couple of days, it took a toll on Jason - he was listless, he had no will to eat, to communicate... after not even a week he attempted suicide."
Lynn, mother of Jason
Stewart Dolin was 57 years old. A partner at Reed Smith — one of the largest law firms in the world. He was successful, professionally accomplished, and by all accounts functioning normally. He had some work-related anxiety.
His doctor prescribed Paxil.
Five days later, Stewart walked to a Chicago Transit Authority station in the Loop. A nurse at the station who didn't know him noticed him pacing back and forth, agitated, staring in the direction of an approaching train that wasn't yet in sight.
When the train appeared, Stewart Dolin leaped in front of it.
He had paroxetine — generic Paxil — in his system. He had been taking it for five days.
His wife Wendy filed a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in 2012.
What that legal process revealed was extraordinary.
GSK's own original clinical trial data had shown paroxetine carried a 6.7 times higher risk of suicidal behaviour in adults of all ages compared to placebo. Not children. Adults. Of all ages. The black box warning on the Paxil label — the one that warns of suicide risk — states the risk applies to people under 24 only. Stewart Dolin was 57.
The trial alleged that GSK had manipulated clinical trial data to conceal the true scale of the adult suicide risk from the FDA. That the company had known about suicides in its own clinical trials and had not acted. That the warning on the label was not just inadequate — it was wrong.
After five weeks of testimony and nearly three days of deliberations, a nine-person jury in Chicago agreed. They awarded Wendy Dolin $3 million — $2 million in damages and $1 million for her husband's suffering in the days before his death.
"GSK has known for two decades that Paxil can cause people of all ages to commit suicide," Wendy's attorneys said after the verdict. "GSK not only hid the risk, but stuck its head in the sand and ignored countless suicides that occurred in its clinical trials."
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. Among all SSRIs it has one of the most extensively documented histories of violence and suicide in both clinical trials and post-market reports. Its specific documented side effect in this case was akathisia — a state of acute inner restlessness and agitation that can drive patients to act on violent or suicidal impulses they would not otherwise act upon. The nurse at the station described Stewart pacing and agitated before he jumped.
That is what akathisia looks like from the outside.
The black box warning on Paxil states the suicide risk ends at age 24. GSK's own clinical trial data showed a 6.7 times higher suicide risk in adults of all ages.
Those two facts cannot both be true.
The $3 million verdict was later overturned on appeal. Not because the jury was wrong about the drug. But because the appeals court found that in 2007 — three years before Stewart Dolin died — the FDA had specifically told GSK not to add adult suicide warnings to the Paxil label.
The FDA.
Told GSK.
Not to warn adults.
About the suicide risk.
The drug stayed on the market. The label stayed wrong. Stewart Dolin was prescribed it three years later.
Since her husband's death, Wendy Dolin has founded MISSD — the Medication-Induced Suicide Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin — dedicated to raising awareness of akathisia and the suicide risk that the label still does not fully acknowledge.
"This has not been about the money," Wendy said outside the courthouse after the verdict. "This lawsuit was about making the public aware of a health risk."
A jury agreed the risk was real. An appeals court said the FDA had blocked the warning.
Stewart Dolin is still dead.
Stewart Dolin was 57 years old. A partner at Reed Smith — one of the largest law firms in the world. He was successful, professionally accomplished, and by all accounts functioning normally. He had some work-related anxiety.
His doctor prescribed Paxil.
Five days later, Stewart walked to a Chicago Transit Authority station in the Loop. A nurse at the station who didn't know him noticed him pacing back and forth, agitated, staring in the direction of an approaching train that wasn't yet in sight.
When the train appeared, Stewart Dolin leaped in front of it.
He had paroxetine — generic Paxil — in his system. He had been taking it for five days.
His wife Wendy filed a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in 2012.
What that legal process revealed was extraordinary.
GSK's own original clinical trial data had shown paroxetine carried a 6.7 times higher risk of suicidal behaviour in adults of all ages compared to placebo. Not children. Adults. Of all ages. The black box warning on the Paxil label — the one that warns of suicide risk — states the risk applies to people under 24 only. Stewart Dolin was 57.
The trial alleged that GSK had manipulated clinical trial data to conceal the true scale of the adult suicide risk from the FDA. That the company had known about suicides in its own clinical trials and had not acted. That the warning on the label was not just inadequate — it was wrong.
After five weeks of testimony and nearly three days of deliberations, a nine-person jury in Chicago agreed. They awarded Wendy Dolin $3 million — $2 million in damages and $1 million for her husband's suffering in the days before his death.
"GSK has known for two decades that Paxil can cause people of all ages to commit suicide," Wendy's attorneys said after the verdict. "GSK not only hid the risk, but stuck its head in the sand and ignored countless suicides that occurred in its clinical trials."
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. Among all SSRIs it has one of the most extensively documented histories of violence and suicide in both clinical trials and post-market reports. Its specific documented side effect in this case was akathisia — a state of acute inner restlessness and agitation that can drive patients to act on violent or suicidal impulses they would not otherwise act upon. The nurse at the station described Stewart pacing and agitated before he jumped.
That is what akathisia looks like from the outside.
The black box warning on Paxil states the suicide risk ends at age 24. GSK's own clinical trial data showed a 6.7 times higher suicide risk in adults of all ages.
Those two facts cannot both be true.
The $3 million verdict was later overturned on appeal. Not because the jury was wrong about the drug. But because the appeals court found that in 2007 — three years before Stewart Dolin died — the FDA had specifically told GSK not to add adult suicide warnings to the Paxil label.
The FDA.
Told GSK.
Not to warn adults.
About the suicide risk.
The drug stayed on the market. The label stayed wrong. Stewart Dolin was prescribed it three years later.
Since her husband's death, Wendy Dolin has founded MISSD — the Medication-Induced Suicide Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin — dedicated to raising awareness of akathisia and the suicide risk that the label still does not fully acknowledge.
"This has not been about the money," Wendy said outside the courthouse after the verdict. "This lawsuit was about making the public aware of a health risk."
A jury agreed the risk was real. An appeals court said the FDA had blocked the warning.
Stewart Dolin is still dead.
Message from the President
Jan Eastgate, President CCHR International
Most people today have difficulty understanding the destructive impact psychiatry has on communities around the world.
For far too many, the lesson is learned only after a psychiatrist has destroyed some part of their life.
The destruction might come in the form of the death of their child due to long-term usage of a stimulant drug, prescribed for an invented psychiatric disorder called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It could be the loss of a loved one at the hand of a gun-toting teenager prescribed a violence-inducing psychiatric drug and/or one who had undergone death education or anger management classes (as was the case in the Columbine school massacre in 1999). Perhaps it is the death of an elderly mother or father from electroshock treatment or an antipsychotic drug prescribed at a nursing home. It could be a child labeled mentally ill early in school, prescribed addictive, psychotropic drugs more potent than cocaine, who later becomes a hard-core street-drug addict because he could not tell the difference between a street drug and those prescribed to him.
At CCHR, we work continuously to educate you on the truth about psychiatry, providing information that psychiatrists would prefer you didn’t have. For example, in 2008, Dr. Nada Stotland, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, acknowledged that CCHR “influences our legislatures, our Food and Drug Administration, our schools, and our media as a moving force behind the unwarranted ‘black box warnings’” on the potentially lethal effects of psychiatric drugs. Note that in Dr. Stotland’s opinion, warning children, adolescents and young adults that could become suicidal while taking antidepressants—a fact the drug regulatory agencies the world over have determined is vital information—is “unwarranted.”
Only by providing all the facts about the risks of psychiatric treatment can we possibly reduce the number of victims who unfortunately learn this truth through personal tragedy.
A Complete Lack of Science
One of the most important things to know about psychiatry is the complete lack of science supporting its system of diagnosis or its treatments. Take, for example, the psychiatric “billing bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV. Not one of the 374 disorders described therein has ever been proven to exist by observable pathology or objective tests. Instead, a panel of psychiatrists arbitrarily defined symptoms of each mental disorder and then literally voted on their suitability for inclusion in the DSM. By this system, if a newly defined mental disorder loses the vote, it fails to make it into the DSM. The system is subjective and ambiguous; its terminology is ill-defined or altogether undefined.
In spite of such serious and fundamental flaws, this system is widely accepted as the benchmark for both judging human behavior and determining treatments in courts, prisons and schools. In many countries, the DSM forms the basis of mental health services billings to insurance companies and bogus “mental health screening.”
By medicalizing everyday problems, psychiatry has fraudulently labeled millions as mentally ill, and either forced or convinced them to adopt prescription psychotropic drugs as a routine part of their lives. As a result, psychotropic drug consumption has escalated with 100 million people worldwide now taking these drugs, 20 million of whom are children.
CCHR remains dedicated to exposing the scientific myths and hype with which psychiatry has managed to surround its diagnostic system and treatments. We work with medical doctors and other professionals that see it as their duty to ensure that government policy and regulations provide the strongest warnings about psychiatric treatments.
Our work aligns with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads, in part:
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,”
“All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law,”
and
“Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”
Psychiatrists violate these Articles on a daily basis.
Through psychiatrists’ false diagnoses, stigmatizing labels, easy-seizure involuntary commitment laws, brutal, depersonalizing treatments all over the world, thousands needlessly fall into their coercive system every day. It is a system that exemplifies human rights abuse and denies individuals their inherent rights.
Each year thousands of psychiatric victims or their families contact CCHR to report incidents of psychiatric harm. And it’s a litany of maltreatment: sexual abuse, brutal institutional treatment and conditions, hospital fraud, false imprisonment, patient deaths and even murder.
Stewart Dolin was 57 years old. A partner at Reed Smith — one of the largest law firms in the world. He was successful, professionally accomplished, and by all accounts functioning normally. He had some work-related anxiety.
His doctor prescribed Paxil.
Five days later, Stewart walked to a Chicago Transit Authority station in the Loop. A nurse at the station who didn't know him noticed him pacing back and forth, agitated, staring in the direction of an approaching train that wasn't yet in sight.
When the train appeared, Stewart Dolin leaped in front of it.
He had paroxetine — generic Paxil — in his system. He had been taking it for five days.
His wife Wendy filed a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in 2012.
What that legal process revealed was extraordinary.
GSK's own original clinical trial data had shown paroxetine carried a 6.7 times higher risk of suicidal behaviour in adults of all ages compared to placebo. Not children. Adults. Of all ages. The black box warning on the Paxil label — the one that warns of suicide risk — states the risk applies to people under 24 only. Stewart Dolin was 57.
The trial alleged that GSK had manipulated clinical trial data to conceal the true scale of the adult suicide risk from the FDA. That the company had known about suicides in its own clinical trials and had not acted. That the warning on the label was not just inadequate — it was wrong.
After five weeks of testimony and nearly three days of deliberations, a nine-person jury in Chicago agreed. They awarded Wendy Dolin $3 million — $2 million in damages and $1 million for her husband's suffering in the days before his death.
"GSK has known for two decades that Paxil can cause people of all ages to commit suicide," Wendy's attorneys said after the verdict. "GSK not only hid the risk, but stuck its head in the sand and ignored countless suicides that occurred in its clinical trials."
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. Among all SSRIs it has one of the most extensively documented histories of violence and suicide in both clinical trials and post-market reports. Its specific documented side effect in this case was akathisia — a state of acute inner restlessness and agitation that can drive patients to act on violent or suicidal impulses they would not otherwise act upon. The nurse at the station described Stewart pacing and agitated before he jumped.
That is what akathisia looks like from the outside.
The black box warning on Paxil states the suicide risk ends at age 24. GSK's own clinical trial data showed a 6.7 times higher suicide risk in adults of all ages.
Those two facts cannot both be true.
The $3 million verdict was later overturned on appeal. Not because the jury was wrong about the drug. But because the appeals court found that in 2007 — three years before Stewart Dolin died — the FDA had specifically told GSK not to add adult suicide warnings to the Paxil label.
The FDA.
Told GSK.
Not to warn adults.
About the suicide risk.
The drug stayed on the market. The label stayed wrong. Stewart Dolin was prescribed it three years later.
Since her husband's death, Wendy Dolin has founded MISSD — the Medication-Induced Suicide Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin — dedicated to raising awareness of akathisia and the suicide risk that the label still does not fully acknowledge.
"This has not been about the money," Wendy said outside the courthouse after the verdict. "This lawsuit was about making the public aware of a health risk."
A jury agreed the risk was real. An appeals court said the FDA had blocked the warning.
Stewart Dolin is still dead.
Stewart Dolin was 57 years old. A partner at Reed Smith — one of the largest law firms in the world. He was successful, professionally accomplished, and by all accounts functioning normally. He had some work-related anxiety.
His doctor prescribed Paxil.
Five days later, Stewart walked to a Chicago Transit Authority station in the Loop. A nurse at the station who didn't know him noticed him pacing back and forth, agitated, staring in the direction of an approaching train that wasn't yet in sight.
When the train appeared, Stewart Dolin leaped in front of it.
He had paroxetine — generic Paxil — in his system. He had been taking it for five days.
His wife Wendy filed a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in 2012.
What that legal process revealed was extraordinary.
GSK's own original clinical trial data had shown paroxetine carried a 6.7 times higher risk of suicidal behaviour in adults of all ages compared to placebo. Not children. Adults. Of all ages. The black box warning on the Paxil label — the one that warns of suicide risk — states the risk applies to people under 24 only. Stewart Dolin was 57.
The trial alleged that GSK had manipulated clinical trial data to conceal the true scale of the adult suicide risk from the FDA. That the company had known about suicides in its own clinical trials and had not acted. That the warning on the label was not just inadequate — it was wrong.
After five weeks of testimony and nearly three days of deliberations, a nine-person jury in Chicago agreed. They awarded Wendy Dolin $3 million — $2 million in damages and $1 million for her husband's suffering in the days before his death.
"GSK has known for two decades that Paxil can cause people of all ages to commit suicide," Wendy's attorneys said after the verdict. "GSK not only hid the risk, but stuck its head in the sand and ignored countless suicides that occurred in its clinical trials."
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. Among all SSRIs it has one of the most extensively documented histories of violence and suicide in both clinical trials and post-market reports. Its specific documented side effect in this case was akathisia — a state of acute inner restlessness and agitation that can drive patients to act on violent or suicidal impulses they would not otherwise act upon. The nurse at the station described Stewart pacing and agitated before he jumped.
That is what akathisia looks like from the outside.
The black box warning on Paxil states the suicide risk ends at age 24. GSK's own clinical trial data showed a 6.7 times higher suicide risk in adults of all ages.
Those two facts cannot both be true.
The $3 million verdict was later overturned on appeal. Not because the jury was wrong about the drug. But because the appeals court found that in 2007 — three years before Stewart Dolin died — the FDA had specifically told GSK not to add adult suicide warnings to the Paxil label.
The FDA.
Told GSK.
Not to warn adults.
About the suicide risk.
The drug stayed on the market. The label stayed wrong. Stewart Dolin was prescribed it three years later.
Since her husband's death, Wendy Dolin has founded MISSD — the Medication-Induced Suicide Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin — dedicated to raising awareness of akathisia and the suicide risk that the label still does not fully acknowledge.
"This has not been about the money," Wendy said outside the courthouse after the verdict. "This lawsuit was about making the public aware of a health risk."
A jury agreed the risk was real. An appeals court said the FDA had blocked the warning.
Stewart Dolin is still dead.
Stewart Dolin was 57 years old. A partner at Reed Smith — one of the largest law firms in the world. He was successful, professionally accomplished, and by all accounts functioning normally. He had some work-related anxiety.
His doctor prescribed Paxil.
Five days later, Stewart walked to a Chicago Transit Authority station in the Loop. A nurse at the station who didn't know him noticed him pacing back and forth, agitated, staring in the direction of an approaching train that wasn't yet in sight.
When the train appeared, Stewart Dolin leaped in front of it.
He had paroxetine — generic Paxil — in his system. He had been taking it for five days.
His wife Wendy filed a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in 2012.
What that legal process revealed was extraordinary.
GSK's own original clinical trial data had shown paroxetine carried a 6.7 times higher risk of suicidal behaviour in adults of all ages compared to placebo. Not children. Adults. Of all ages. The black box warning on the Paxil label — the one that warns of suicide risk — states the risk applies to people under 24 only. Stewart Dolin was 57.
The trial alleged that GSK had manipulated clinical trial data to conceal the true scale of the adult suicide risk from the FDA. That the company had known about suicides in its own clinical trials and had not acted. That the warning on the label was not just inadequate — it was wrong.
After five weeks of testimony and nearly three days of deliberations, a nine-person jury in Chicago agreed. They awarded Wendy Dolin $3 million — $2 million in damages and $1 million for her husband's suffering in the days before his death.
"GSK has known for two decades that Paxil can cause people of all ages to commit suicide," Wendy's attorneys said after the verdict. "GSK not only hid the risk, but stuck its head in the sand and ignored countless suicides that occurred in its clinical trials."
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. Among all SSRIs it has one of the most extensively documented histories of violence and suicide in both clinical trials and post-market reports. Its specific documented side effect in this case was akathisia — a state of acute inner restlessness and agitation that can drive patients to act on violent or suicidal impulses they would not otherwise act upon. The nurse at the station described Stewart pacing and agitated before he jumped.
That is what akathisia looks like from the outside.
The black box warning on Paxil states the suicide risk ends at age 24. GSK's own clinical trial data showed a 6.7 times higher suicide risk in adults of all ages.
Those two facts cannot both be true.
The $3 million verdict was later overturned on appeal. Not because the jury was wrong about the drug. But because the appeals court found that in 2007 — three years before Stewart Dolin died — the FDA had specifically told GSK not to add adult suicide warnings to the Paxil label.
The FDA.
Told GSK.
Not to warn adults.
About the suicide risk.
The drug stayed on the market. The label stayed wrong. Stewart Dolin was prescribed it three years later.
Since her husband's death, Wendy Dolin has founded MISSD — the Medication-Induced Suicide Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin — dedicated to raising awareness of akathisia and the suicide risk that the label still does not fully acknowledge.
"This has not been about the money," Wendy said outside the courthouse after the verdict. "This lawsuit was about making the public aware of a health risk."
A jury agreed the risk was real. An appeals court said the FDA had blocked the warning.
Stewart Dolin is still dead.
Stewart Dolin was 57 years old. A partner at Reed Smith — one of the largest law firms in the world. He was successful, professionally accomplished, and by all accounts functioning normally. He had some work-related anxiety.
His doctor prescribed Paxil.
Five days later, Stewart walked to a Chicago Transit Authority station in the Loop. A nurse at the station who didn't know him noticed him pacing back and forth, agitated, staring in the direction of an approaching train that wasn't yet in sight.
When the train appeared, Stewart Dolin leaped in front of it.
He had paroxetine — generic Paxil — in his system. He had been taking it for five days.
His wife Wendy filed a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in 2012.
What that legal process revealed was extraordinary.
GSK's own original clinical trial data had shown paroxetine carried a 6.7 times higher risk of suicidal behaviour in adults of all ages compared to placebo. Not children. Adults. Of all ages. The black box warning on the Paxil label — the one that warns of suicide risk — states the risk applies to people under 24 only. Stewart Dolin was 57.
The trial alleged that GSK had manipulated clinical trial data to conceal the true scale of the adult suicide risk from the FDA. That the company had known about suicides in its own clinical trials and had not acted. That the warning on the label was not just inadequate — it was wrong.
After five weeks of testimony and nearly three days of deliberations, a nine-person jury in Chicago agreed. They awarded Wendy Dolin $3 million — $2 million in damages and $1 million for her husband's suffering in the days before his death.
"GSK has known for two decades that Paxil can cause people of all ages to commit suicide," Wendy's attorneys said after the verdict. "GSK not only hid the risk, but stuck its head in the sand and ignored countless suicides that occurred in its clinical trials."
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. Among all SSRIs it has one of the most extensively documented histories of violence and suicide in both clinical trials and post-market reports. Its specific documented side effect in this case was akathisia — a state of acute inner restlessness and agitation that can drive patients to act on violent or suicidal impulses they would not otherwise act upon. The nurse at the station described Stewart pacing and agitated before he jumped.
That is what akathisia looks like from the outside.
The black box warning on Paxil states the suicide risk ends at age 24. GSK's own clinical trial data showed a 6.7 times higher suicide risk in adults of all ages.
Those two facts cannot both be true.
The $3 million verdict was later overturned on appeal. Not because the jury was wrong about the drug. But because the appeals court found that in 2007 — three years before Stewart Dolin died — the FDA had specifically told GSK not to add adult suicide warnings to the Paxil label.
The FDA.
Told GSK.
Not to warn adults.
About the suicide risk.
The drug stayed on the market. The label stayed wrong. Stewart Dolin was prescribed it three years later.
Since her husband's death, Wendy Dolin has founded MISSD — the Medication-Induced Suicide Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin — dedicated to raising awareness of akathisia and the suicide risk that the label still does not fully acknowledge.
"This has not been about the money," Wendy said outside the courthouse after the verdict. "This lawsuit was about making the public aware of a health risk."
A jury agreed the risk was real. An appeals court said the FDA had blocked the warning.
Stewart Dolin is still dead.
Stewart Dolin was 57 years old. A partner at Reed Smith — one of the largest law firms in the world. He was successful, professionally accomplished, and by all accounts functioning normally. He had some work-related anxiety.
His doctor prescribed Paxil.
Five days later, Stewart walked to a Chicago Transit Authority station in the Loop. A nurse at the station who didn't know him noticed him pacing back and forth, agitated, staring in the direction of an approaching train that wasn't yet in sight.
When the train appeared, Stewart Dolin leaped in front of it.
He had paroxetine — generic Paxil — in his system. He had been taking it for five days.
His wife Wendy filed a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in 2012.
What that legal process revealed was extraordinary.
GSK's own original clinical trial data had shown paroxetine carried a 6.7 times higher risk of suicidal behaviour in adults of all ages compared to placebo. Not children. Adults. Of all ages. The black box warning on the Paxil label — the one that warns of suicide risk — states the risk applies to people under 24 only. Stewart Dolin was 57.
The trial alleged that GSK had manipulated clinical trial data to conceal the true scale of the adult suicide risk from the FDA. That the company had known about suicides in its own clinical trials and had not acted. That the warning on the label was not just inadequate — it was wrong.
After five weeks of testimony and nearly three days of deliberations, a nine-person jury in Chicago agreed. They awarded Wendy Dolin $3 million — $2 million in damages and $1 million for her husband's suffering in the days before his death.
"GSK has known for two decades that Paxil can cause people of all ages to commit suicide," Wendy's attorneys said after the verdict. "GSK not only hid the risk, but stuck its head in the sand and ignored countless suicides that occurred in its clinical trials."
Paxil — paroxetine — is an SSRI antidepressant. Its documented side effects include agitation, aggression, hostility, mania, and abnormal behaviour. Among all SSRIs it has one of the most extensively documented histories of violence and suicide in both clinical trials and post-market reports. Its specific documented side effect in this case was akathisia — a state of acute inner restlessness and agitation that can drive patients to act on violent or suicidal impulses they would not otherwise act upon. The nurse at the station described Stewart pacing and agitated before he jumped.
That is what akathisia looks like from the outside.
The black box warning on Paxil states the suicide risk ends at age 24. GSK's own clinical trial data showed a 6.7 times higher suicide risk in adults of all ages.
Those two facts cannot both be true.
The $3 million verdict was later overturned on appeal. Not because the jury was wrong about the drug. But because the appeals court found that in 2007 — three years before Stewart Dolin died — the FDA had specifically told GSK not to add adult suicide warnings to the Paxil label.
The FDA.
Told GSK.
Not to warn adults.
About the suicide risk.
The drug stayed on the market. The label stayed wrong. Stewart Dolin was prescribed it three years later.
Since her husband's death, Wendy Dolin has founded MISSD — the Medication-Induced Suicide Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin — dedicated to raising awareness of akathisia and the suicide risk that the label still does not fully acknowledge.
"This has not been about the money," Wendy said outside the courthouse after the verdict. "This lawsuit was about making the public aware of a health risk."
A jury agreed the risk was real. An appeals court said the FDA had blocked the warning.
Stewart Dolin is still dead.
Susan Hendricks murdered her two sons, their father and her stepmother.
She had been psych-drugged with five different psychiatric drugs.
Psychiatric drugs like antidepressants and antipsychotics have documented side-effects including mania, aggression, hostility and violence
Andrea Yates waited for her husband Russell to leave for work at their home in Clear Lake, Texas.
Then she drowned her five children, one by one, in the family bathtub.
Noah was seven.
John was five.
Paul was three.
Luke was two.
Mary was six months old.
Andrea Yates had been on a cocktail of psychiatric drugs. Sixteen days before the murders, her psychiatrist discontinued one of them and added another.
The drug timeline in this case is the story.
Andrea had been under psychiatric care for years. She had attempted suicide twice. She had been hospitalised multiple times. Each time the psychiatric system's answer was more drugs. By spring 2001 she had been admitted to the Devereux Texas Treatment Network twice and was on a combination of Haldol, Wellbutrin, and Effexor.
On June 4 — sixteen days before the murders — her psychiatrist Dr Mohammed Saeed discontinued the Haldol and added Remeron on top of the Effexor she was already taking. The Effexor dose was at nearly the maximum allowed level.
Sixteen days later, all five children were dead.
Each drug in that cocktail carries its own documented profile of harm. But the combination — and the abrupt switching of one powerful drug for another — is where the pharmacological picture becomes most damning.
Effexor — venlafaxine — is an SNRI antidepressant. In 2005, four years after the murders, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals added homicidal ideation to Effexor's label as a documented side effect. The warning had not been there when it was prescribed to Andrea. Andrea had told doctors she was experiencing intense homicidal hallucinations while on it.
Nobody stopped the prescription.
Nobody acted on it.
Remeron — mirtazapine — is an antidepressant whose documented side effects include agitation, aggression, mania, hallucinations, and psychosis.
It was added to Andrea's already dangerous drug load on top of near-maximum Effexor.
Wellbutrin — bupropion — is an antidepressant documented to cause agitation, aggression, hostility, anxiety, and psychosis.
Haldol — haloperidol — is a powerful antipsychotic. Stopping it abruptly is documented to cause severe psychiatric destabilisation — the brain suddenly deprived of the chemical suppression it has adapted to, firing back into psychosis harder than before.
A woman already on a dangerous combination of antidepressants. One powerful drug abruptly stopped. A new antidepressant added simultaneously. And a history of telling doctors she was having homicidal hallucinations on these drugs.
Nobody stopped the prescriptions.
Nobody was held accountable.
Andrea Yates was convicted of capital murder in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.
That conviction was thrown out on appeal after it emerged that the prosecution's expert witness had fabricated testimony — claiming she got the idea from a Law & Order episode that never existed. At retrial in 2006 she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was sent to a state psychiatric hospital where she remains to this day.
The defence attorney's opening statement at the retrial made the drug argument directly: if Andrea had not been taken off the antipsychotic and placed on the new drug combination, her children would still be alive.
The psychiatrist who changed the drug cocktail sixteen days before the murders faced no criminal charges.
No regulatory action.
Nothing.
Five children were drowned in a bathtub.
Homicidal ideation was added to the Effexor label four years later.
The drug that warned about causing exactly what happened — after it happened.
Noah. John. Paul. Luke. Mary.
Gabriel Myers, aged seven, hung himelf.
His psychiatrist drugged him with the antidepressants and antipsychotic Lexapro, Zyprexa and Symbyax.
Antidepressants state on their label they can cause suicidal thoughts and actions in children.
