CREATING HARM Drug-Induced Violence

“Little could the public have suspected that the madman of its nightmares, who kills without warning and for no apparent reason, was not always driven by an evil within but rather by a popular medication.”17
— Robert Whitaker, Author, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, 2002

Psychiatrists blame violent crime on a patient’s failure to continue his or her medication, while knowing that extreme violence is a documented side effect of both taking psychiatric drugs and withdrawal from them.

On June 20, 2001, Texas mother and housewife, Andrea Yates, filled the bathtub and drowned her five children, ages 6 months to 7 years. For many years, Mrs. Yates, 37, had struggled through hospitalizations, prescribed psychiatric drugs and suicide attempts. On March 12, 2002, the jury rejected her insanity defense and found her guilty of capital murder.

For the legal profession and the media, the story had been told and the case was closed. For psychiatry, their excuses were predictable: Mrs. Yates suffered from a severe mental illness, which was “treatment resistant” or she was “denied appropriate and quality mental health care.”

Unsatisfied, CCHR Texas obtained independent medical assessments of Mrs. Yates’ medical records. Science consultant Edward G. Ezrailson, Ph.D., studied them and reported that the cocktail of drugs prescribed to Mrs. Yates caused involuntary intoxication. The “overdose” of one antidepressant and “sudden high doses” of another, “worsened her behavior,” he said. This “led to murder.”

Robert Whitaker’s extensive research discovered that antipsychotic drugs temporarily dim psychosis but, over the long run, make patients more biologically prone to it. A second paradoxical effect, one that emerged with the more potent neuroleptics, is a side effect called akathisia (a, without; kathisia, sitting; an inability to keep still). This side effect has been linked to assaultive, violent behavior.

A 1990 study determined that 50% of all fights in a psychiatric ward could be tied to akathisia. Patients described “violent urges to assault anyone near.”

A 1998 British report revealed that at least 5% of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant patients suffered “commonly recognized” side effects that include agitation, anxiety and nervousness. Around 5% of the reported side effects include aggression, hallucinations, malaise and depersonalization.

In 1995, nine Australian psychiatrists reported that patients had slashed themselves or become preoccupied with violence while taking SSRIs. “I didn’t want to die, I just felt like tearing my flesh to pieces,” one patient told the psychiatrists.

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