Posted on 03/26/2005 11:20:55 AM PST by neverdem
Polaris
Jeff Weise, whose rampage killed 10 people, took antidepressants.
RED LAKE, Minn., March 25 - In their sleepless search for answers, the family of Jeff Weise, the teenager who killed nine people and then himself, says it is left wondering about the drugs he was prescribed for his waves of depression.
On Friday, as Tammy Lussier prepared to bury Mr. Weise, who was her nephew, and her father, who was among those he killed, she found herself looking back over the last year, she said, when Mr. Weise began taking the antidepressant Prozac after a suicide attempt that Ms. Lussier described as a "cry for help."
"They kept upping the dose for him," she said, "and by the end, he was taking three of the 20 milligram pills a day. I can't help but think it was too much, that it must have set him off."
Lee Cook, another relative of Mr. Weise, said his medication had increased a few weeks before the shootings on Monday.
"I do wonder," Mr. Cook said, "whether on top of everything else he had going on in his life, on top of all the other problems, whether the drugs could have been the final straw."
The effects of antidepressants on young people remain a topic of fierce debate among scientists and doctors.
Last year, a federal panel of drug experts said antidepressants could cause children and teenagers to become suicidal. The Food and Drug Administration has since required the makers of antidepressants to warn of that danger on their labels for the medications.
The suicide risk is particularly acute when therapy starts or a dosage changes, the drug agency has warned.
Although some studies link the drugs to an increased suicide risk, the research does not suggest such a connection to violence like Mr. Weise's rampage through Red Lake High School.
Without knowing Mr. Weise's medical history or precise diagnosis, it is virtually impossible to speculate on what factors may have affected him - the drugs, his underlying depression, a gloomy childhood wrapped in tragedy or something else entirely.
"What I can say is that his physician, I'm sure, made the appropriate recommendations based on whatever the dosages were," said Morry Smulevitz, a spokesman for Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac.
The dosage range, Mr. Smulevitz said, runs from 20 milligrams to 80 milligrams a day, so Mr. Weise's 60 milligram dose fell in that bracket. Mr. Weise, though just 16, was taller than 6 feet and weighed 250 pounds.
Ms. Lussier, who lived with Mr. Weise in her mother's house on the Red Lake Indian reservation in far northern Minnesota, said she could not understand what else, aside from drugs, had changed to explain his sudden violence.
Since his suicide attempt and 72-hour hospitalization a year ago, Mr. Weise had seemed to be improving, she said, and he was receiving mental health counseling and a doctor's care at the medical center on the reservation.
Others in Red Lake said, however, that they had seen few signs of improvement in the dour, solitary boy.
The driver of a school bus, Lorene Gurneau, said she often saw Mr. Weise standing outside the middle school, wearing his long black clothes and strange hairdos, staring off into nothing, in a daze, even as children raced by or teachers passed him.
Still, in at least one Internet posting last fall, Mr. Weise sounded determined to improve his life after his suicide attempt, and he noted that he was taking antidepressants.
"I had went through a lot of things in my life that had driven me to a darker path than most choose to take," the posting said. "I split the flesh on my wrist with a box opener, painting the floor of my bedroom with blood I shouldn't have spilt. After sitting there for what seemed like hours (which apparently was only minutes), I had the revelation that this was not the path."
"It was my dicision," he went on, "to seek medical treatment, as on the other hand I could've chose to sit there until enough blood drained from my downward lacerations on my wrists to die."
On Monday, in the hours before the shooting, Mr. Weise had seemed cheerful and normal, Ms. Lussier said. His teacher, who was spending an hour a day at his house as part of a "homebound" study program that the school system had created because of his troubles, arrived to give him his homework assignments, as usual. At 12:30 p.m., less than three hours before the shootings, another aunt, Shauna, stopped in.
"He was watching a movie on TV," Ms. Lussier said. "There was nothing out of the ordinary. People keep saying he was depressed, but if you saw him, he was getting better. All we can think of is, what about the drugs?"
Though research has not linked antidepressants to acts of violence on others, several incidents have gained wide publicity.
In 1989, Joseph Wesbecker walked into a printing plant in Louisville, Ky., with a bag of guns and killed eight co-workers and himself. He was taking Prozac, which had recently been approved.
In 1999, a student involved in the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado had reportedly taken Luvox, an antidepressant similar to Prozac.
In 2001, Christopher Pittman killed his grandparents while taking Zoloft, another antidepressant similar to Prozac. His lawyers faulted the drug, but a jury in Charleston, S.C., convicted him of murder in February.
Still, Katherine S. Newman, a professor at Princeton University who has studied school killings, said just a small percentage appeared to have possibly involved psychiatric drugs. Of 27 such killings from 1974 to 2001, fewer than one-fifth of the suspects had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder before the shootings, Professor Newman said. Dr. Frank Ochberg, a former associate director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said he once dismissed any links between antidepressants and suicides or homicidal acts. The recent research, however, has changed his mind, Dr. Ochberg said.
"If your intention is shooting the place up and dying as you do it, you can put the fantasy together," he said. "Suicidal and homicidal intentions together could theoretically follow the same path."
N.R.A. Aide Urges Armed Teachers
PHOENIX, March 25 (AP) - All options should be considered to prevent rampages like the Minnesota shooting, including making guns available to teachers, Sandra S. Froman, first vice president of the National Rifle Association, said Friday.
Monica Davey reported from Red Lake for this article, and Gardiner Harris from Washington. Jodi Wilgoren contributed reporting from New York.
That's not news, it's an editorial. And any good journalist would be quick to point out the salient point of the entire piece - that correlation is not causation.
If the writer doesn't know that, then the editor better correct them, if the writer and editor do (know) what are they trying to do?
Depression is associated with suicide, not homicide. If you check the second link in comment# 1, you'll find that mostly all of these school shootings of recent years are associated with this class of antidepresssants, the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, SSRIs, of which Prozac is the grandfather.
All drugs can have adverse effects based on genetic predisposition that determines how individuals metabolize any particular drug. They need to figure out which individuals should not take SSRIs, or else be hospitalized for the first few months of therapy or a change in dosage.
FDA Public Health Advisory October 15, 2004
"Pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for any indication should be closely observed for clinical worsening, as well as agitation, irritability, suicidality, and unusual changes in behavior, especially during the initial few months of a course of drug therapy, or at times of dose changes, either increases or decreases."
Now this class of drugs has a "Black Box" warning. The kid had his dose of Prozac increased a few weeks ago.
It's not as recent as you might suspect. When I was in 5th grade about 26 years ago, a 16 year old girl opened fire on Cleveland Elementary in San Diego killing 2 people and wounding others. I remember it quite clearly because the principal from my school took over for the principal that was killed. There was a song written about the incident called "I Hate Mondays", which is the reason she gave the police that day.
If you are diagnosed bipolar II after you start taking prozac - Get another doctor!
It is the drug a great deal of the time. Many of these same patients do fine on tricyclics and older antidepressants. However if you just like being on an SSRI, a major tranquilizer (tegretol etc) and later lithium just listen to the good doc. He has been trained by Eli-Lilly. He is the expert!
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
I pinged because of the intoxicated appearance of the killer in the picture, and the fact that, even though it's Saturday, it's mentioned on the front page of the NY Times.
BINGO... shooter's dead, his whole family is dead, school guard is dead and school's not liable, so ...
He looks whacked-out.
Christopher Pittman, who killed his grandparents in South Carolina while taking Zoloft, was first started on Paxil, another SSRI, about a month before the killing, IIRC. He was switched to Zoloft a week or so after, and then the dose was increased a few days before he killed.
They fortunately or unfortunately have never seen the frenzy and obsession this drug can precipitate in an otherwise normal mildly depressed person. I have more than once. I also saw the reaction of the psychiatrist to the mania/frenzy it produced in one person. The person instantly became Bipolar II. Never mind that before an SSRI there were never any of these symptoms. The solution? Addition of Tegretol followed by other "mood stabilizers". And I liked being told that "most in these cases end up on lithium" and "she is going to need medicine to live a normal life". Lithium is a drug with nasty side effects. Thank God that person stopped the Prozac. (With another doctor's help) Today, eight years later, that person lives a normal drug free life without a single "manic" episode.
This drug class has its uses. It is a powerful effective drug (though by no means as broadly effective as they would have you believe). It just should be recognized for what it is and prescribed accordingly. It is a very powerful drug with a risk (how significant we don't know due to the research techniques) of mania, obsession and agitation and should be prescribed with that full knowledge.
ping
"FReeper Melbell Wonders if Lack of Discipline and Proper Upbringing Prompted School Shootings."
There, I fixed the title.
Not to mention that it prevents orgasm and ejaculation in some individuals. Takes a lot of the fun out of masturbation, which could really mess up a 16 year-old boy's life.
I agree totally and I have extensive knowledge on antidepressants and benzodiazepines.......most uneducated people don't realize at all that, like you posted, this psychotropic drug can have devastating side effects that do include homicidal thoughts and those who think you can just control it have no clue about how these drugs can effect the mind......I was harmed greatly by Klonopin for some situational panic I had.......after going off it, I got the protracted benzo wd which debilitated me, and took me three years to recover........there is alot more than just anecdotal evidence out there.......but if one doesn't follow it, well then they have no clue
then you have never had the misfortune of having a psychotropoic drug almost drive you over the edge....it can and does happen.....I know first hand
yeah,...and then uh,er,uh,...twisting his hair into horns and dressing like the Columbine POS,ooops
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