Could it Be Anti-Depressants?
By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet
Posted on May 1, 2009, Printed on May 6, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/139243/
The late comedian Richard Pryor used to riff about a fictitious
interview with a mass
murderer. "But why did you kill [gulp] everyone
in the house?" asks the reporter.
"They was home." Today it wouldn't be funny.
The occasional Susan Smith or Andrea Yates who kills her kids
has given way to the
weekly child, sibling, parent, grandparent, spouse and all-of-the-above
killer.
Last week in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, D'Andre Howard
is accused of
killing his girlfriend's sister, father and grandfather and
leaving her mother in critical
condition.
The same day in Middletown, Md., Christopher Alan Wood killed
his wife and three
children. A few days later in Towson, Md., William Parente
killed his wife and two
daughters.
Earlier this month, Kerby Revelus killed two of his sisters in
Milton, Mass., -- decapitating
his younger sister in front of her birthday cake while police
watched in horror.
In Orting, Wash., James Harrison killed his five children.
And that's just this month.
Last month, Devan Kalathat killed his two children and three
other relatives in Santa Clara,
Calif., and left his wife in critical condition, where she clings
to life.
And Michael McLendon slaughtered his mother and grandparents
in southeast Alabama,
along with many others.
Of course the press is quick to blame the monthly and even weekly
family killings on
economic stresses and lack of jobs.
Psychologists say a bad economy can create a family annihilator
like Bob Dylan's Hollis
Brown, who "looked for work and money … and walked
a rugged mile" and whose
"children are so hungry that they don't know how to smile,"
until he kills his wife and five
children in a mercy massacre.
And that's before you get to the added threat of losing your
wife and kids, which produces
a feeling of loss of control in the killer-to-be, say psychologists.
Some have even blamed Binghamton, N.Y., killer Jiverly Voong's
spree on his poor
English, and Revelus' spree on his lack of job skills after
prison.
But of course the elephant in the room is: When people lost their
jobs or wives in the past,
they didn't kill their entire families in a burst -- make that
gun burst -- of irrational rage.
Not every week.
No, behind the deeds of Howard, Wood, Parente, Revelus, Harrison,
Kalathat,
McLendon, et al. -- who are always called "depressed" and
"bipolar" -- are probably
some health care professionals thinking, "I shouldn't have
prescribed that psychoactive
med," and hoping the press doesn't come around.
Especially as California psychiatrist Christian Hageseth III
goes to jail for irresponsibly
prescribing Prozac to John McKay, who killed himself.
Certainly Middletown's Wood was prescribed the violence-linked
Cymbalta and Paxil,
along with two other psychiatric drugs before his deeds.
His suicide notes even confirm he
felt he was getting worse, not better, on the medication, say
police.
Who can forget that Andrea Yates was on a double dose of Effexor
when she drowned
her five children in 2001?
But Mickey Mouse gun laws help, too, and there might well be
private or licensed gun
sellers thinking, "I shouldn't have sold that squirrelly dude
that weapon," after the recent
violence.
After all, Virginia Tech's Seung-Hui Cho, Voong and Pittsburgh's
Richard Poplawski
passed their background checks with flying colors and were legal
gun owners by existing
guns laws. Police killer Poplawski even had a conceal-and-carry
permit.
And last year's Northern Illinois University shooter, Stephen
Phillip Kazmierczak, waltzed
into a Champaign, Ill., gun store and bought two of his weapons,
despite having been in a
mental institution for a year and a receiving psychological
discharge from the Army.
Who do gun laws reject?
No, behind the spate of family homicides is not just the economy,
job stress and failing
marriages, but a government that approved a cohort of
psychoactive drugs with proven
homicidal and suicidal side effects.
Blockbuster antidepressants and anti-psychotics that
are kept on the market despite the blood baths they can cause
so drug companies can get
their patent's worth.
And it's a government that allows unlimited weapon arsenals --
including military and
assault-style weapons -- in the hands of everyone, including
the unbalanced on
"depression" drugs, only to act surprised when another entire
family -- everyone who was
home -- is killed.
Martha Rosenberg is a columnist and cartoonist
who frequently writes about the
impact of the pharmaceutical, food and gun industries
on public health. A former
medical copywriter, her work has appeared in the
Boston Globe, San Francisco
Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune,
as well as on the BBC and in
the original National Lampoon.
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