Because we all know that untreated, these individuals would have not committed such violent acts, or at least would not do so at a rate greater than the bulk population. This is Nobel material folks.
This pair’s website is a contribution to junk science. Ask any statistician or scientist and they’ll tell you in your sleep that a ream of documented anecdotes is meaningless - real correlation and cause-and-effect require carefully designed, conducted, controlled and analyzed studies. Without all of that, the results are bunk.
But it will inflame public perception and makes an easy point of entry for a reporter looking for an easy story or a big splash. And once the public is softened up, a crappy study without proper methods will be plastered all over the evening news with absurd Captain Obvious headlines like “Psych Drugs Carry Risks.” By the time the proper criticism and context of the story reaches the media, they’ll be on to their next manufactured crisis.
The calls of reasonable people like yourself saying “mentally ill people being treated are still mentally ill” will be ignored in a rush against Big Pharma, which will by then be accused of putting depressants in Tylenol to create demand for SSRIs.
The New York Times did the same thing with a handful of crimes committed by Iraq War veterans. (I don’t recall if Afghanistan veterans were included in the survey, but since the NYT doesn’t seem hell-bent opposed to the Afghan action I guess that’s data they don’t want to see.)
Of course there a many violent and suicidal people who need such medication and who would be that way without it.
That said, I've seen too many accounts where SSRI's were given to people carelessly. Add to that I've seen accounts were people who weren't violent or suicidal became that way after they were perscibed SSRI's and after they stopped taking the SSRI's.
And yes, the Meysenburg/Bostock site is unmitigated garbage.