|
Withdrawal Effects
In 1996, the National
Preferred Medicines Center, Inc. of New Zealand issued a report on �Acute
drug withdrawal,� which stated that with drawal from psychoactive drugs
can cause:
1) rebound effects that exacerbate previous symptoms of a �disease,� and
2) new symptoms unrelated to the original condition and unfamiliar to
the patient.
Dr. John Zajecka reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry that the
agitation and irritability experienced by patients withdrawing from one
SSRI can cause �aggressiveness and suicidal impulsivity.�
In The Lancet , the British medical journal, Dr. Miki Bloch reported on
patients who became suicidal and homicidal after stopping an antide pressant,
with one man having thoughts of harming �his own children.�
While psychiatrists continue
to discount the drug-suicide-violence link as merely �anecdotal,� courts are
starting to act where psychiatric associations will not.
On May 25, 2001, an Australian
judge blamed a psychiatric antidepressant for turning a peaceful, law-abiding
man, David Hawkins, into a violent killer. Judge Barry O�Keefe of the New South
Wales Supreme Court said that had Mr. Hawkins not taken the antidepressant,
�it is overwhelmingly probable that Mrs. Hawkins would not have been killed��
In June 2001, a Wyoming
jury awarded $8 million to the relatives of a man, Donald Schell, who went on
a shooting rampage after taking an antidepressant. The jury determined that
the drug was 80% responsible for inducing the killing spree.
Many medical studies report evidence of psychiatric drugs inducing violent or
suicidal behavior. The killers listed below, from the U.S., Australia and Japan,
brutally murdered 39 people while undergoing psychiatric drug treatment.
Kip Kinkel
Mamoru Takuma David Hawkins
Jeremy Strohmeyer
Andrea Yates
Next
Back
to Contents
|
|