Posted on 12/19/2012 8:32:06 PM PST by traumer
By now the whole country is fully embroiled in the Gun Control debate, spurred by the grisly murder of 27 people, mostly kids, at the Sandy Hook Elementary school last Friday.
Guns might not be the only problem though. New York Magazine wrote a piece about shooter Adam Lanza's supposed "aspergers" syndrome as a "red herring" meant to distract from the real problem (guns, of course, the subject goes without mentioning).
Inside the piece though they report Adam Lanza's uncle said the boy was prescribed Fanapt, a controversial anti-psychotic medicine. Fanapt was the subject of a Bloomberg report when it passed regulators, after previously getting the "nonapproval" stamp. Why wasn't it approved, you might ask?
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
There is now this note at the end of the article "...Editor's Note: This post originally cited a report in the Daily News that quoted Adam Lanza's uncle as saying he was taking an anti-psychotic drug called Fanapt. The Daily News subsequently deleted the quote. It is now unclear whether Lanza was taking Fanapt..." http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/12/aspergers-is-a-red-herring-to-explain-newtown.html
It turns out that the "uncle" may be one Johnathan Lee Riches.
photo here can be seen here:
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/man-identifying-himself-as-jonathan-lanza-uncle-of-adam-news-photo/158439067
and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Lee_Riches
No, no, no—that is raw data for every adverse event reported by anyone to the FDA with that individual somehow suspecting a link to the drug—with dozens and dozens of such ‘reported’ events for one of the safest and most widely taken drugs around. That 1% is the percent of all reported effects, not a percent of the people taking it.
Millions and millions of Americans take Synthroid or its equivalent, and they often take it after the first presenting symptoms that caused thyroid testing included depression. Then, it takes weeks for the drug to be fully built up in your system, so it doesn’t have immediate effect.
That raw list of any supposed side effects has everything, including the kitchen sink, in it. You would never find suicide or depression listed as an actual side effect of the drug.
Taking too much of it and getting too much thyroid in your system can lead to the like of heart palpitations and so anxiety could presumably come from that, but that is an overdose level.
If people can’t convert T-4 to T-3 adequately that can lead to the drug not accomplishing its goal or having the intended effect, but it doesn’t cause suicidal thoughts or actions.
I found numerous links by doing a simple Google search using the terms adverse side effect synthroid. Many comments are as stated here.
Would you like to share one that is actually from a legitimate medical authority?
Maybe you'd rather research it for yourself so you can satisfy your questions adequately. Feel free to ping me to your results.
I looked in the PDR and in the literature, but I couldn’t find anything like that. On the contrary, hypothyroidism (which Synthroid is intended to treat) includes depression among possible symptoms.
The answer is that you can’t find one—levothyroxine is one of the most widely used and tested drugs with side effects only from overdosage and not including depression or suicidal thoughts or impulses.
Exactly.
I took the medication and had a nervous breakdown that included suicidal thoughts and feelings. I found references online from respected medical resources that said that this could be one side effect of that medication.
I stopped taking the medication and had a resolution of all of my symptoms within 3 days. At that point, once I stopped taking the Synthroid, I was NOW hypothyroid (for two months) until I could get back to my doctor for a prescription change to Armour thyroid.
In my hypothyroid state, my depression was resolved.
I never had these problems again.
That is my personal experience. I have spoken with other women who’ve had the same experience with that medication. I’ve spoken with THREE doctors about this who’ve seen similar negative reactions to Synthroid. In the words of one of my doctors, “It works great for most people, but some people can’t handle it.” (Another of my doctors told me that she preferred to prescribe it because ‘it is easier to test the accuracy of the blood levels than Armour.’ NOT that patients did better on Synthroid over Armour.)
The closest I can come to understanding why is that Synthroid may not convert as well into T-3. I’m not saying that this is the problem, only that this is MY best guess.
You say that millions of people use Synthroid without adverse reactions? True. And millions of people use Prosaic without any problems yet we still discuss the few that do.
If you don’t like it, you can lump it. I know what I went through and how to avoid going through that again.
Armour or compounded thyroid all the way for me, baby.
And NO, I’m not saying that EVERYONE should stop taking Synthroid. Do what works for your own body. I have a friend who’s been thriving on it for years. We’re not clones and what works perfectly well for one person may not work for another.
You should only ever have been prescribed Synthroid for hypothyroidism, been started on a very low dose and then tested and likely had that dose increased over time. The condition for which you should have been prescribed Synthroid or Armour causes depression. It is possible that you responded better to the dosage or prescription for Armour.
However, you just now misread the link you gave me as a respected medical resource saying that, when it wasn’t and it didn’t.
Not statistically significant of course but I’ve been on synthroid for many years - never a problem like Marie’s fortunately.
I knew it would eventually come out that Adam Lanza was on some sort of psychoactive pharmaceutical. There it is.
Congress should definitely look into these mass shootings, but they'd better take note of the root cause, or nothing they do will change it.
More info on the connection between these mind altering prescription drugs and mass killings can be found here: SSRI Stories.com
AL’s “uncle” was a scammer. Uncle Jonathan L has largely been scrubbed from news accounts. There is as far as I know no credible primary source for AL having been on psych meds.
Thank you for this eloquent and meaningful contribution. I tried to express something similar in a recent thread about birth control, when I wrote about the adverse side effects of the pill and how severely it had affected me. The point is that any medication, whether for blood pressure or a foot fungus, can have powerful adverse side effects.
I.see it as the Grace of God that you were able to use your mind to find the way out of that terrible dark place.
Bless you.
Please see my post 21 on this thread. Not that he wasn’t on an SSRI...just that this particular story was inaccurate.
What a shocking story. So sad, and so unnecessary for her to have suffered. Thank God that you were there.
windflier see amom’s post 21 and my previous. While I would not be surprised to find that AL was on psych meds, we do not currently have a credible primary source for this assertion.
Thank God for your recovery. There are similar reports about Prozac.
We will. The ME has asked for specialists to come and help find any biological causes for Lanza’s behavior. He said there is absolutely nothing about Asperger’s that would fit what he did.
I concur on that last.
We have not yet seen a toxicology report. Hopefully we will soon.
This could have been paranoid schizophrenia presenting itself on top of the ongoing Aspergers, for one reasonable conjecture.
If there was any ongoing psych consultation going on, that guy is probably hunkered down with his lawyer waiting on subpoenas before saying anything. Or dead (if the school psychologist was working with him, and that’s why he went there).
But there’s little but conjecture at this point.
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