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I under no circumstances have ever said that someone on SSRIs or any meds should stop taking them. I believe the man who shot up NIU should have stayed on his meds. I never said otherwise.

I also believe that, when his depressive symptoms first started being recognized,

Gun laws stronger, but not foolproof ("he had stopped taking prescription medicines for anxiety.") A poster on that thread said stated that a Chicago paper, I believe the Sun-Times, IIRC, said he was taking Prozac.

Making Sense of the Great Suicide Debate

This thread has 5 links from the professional literature and 2 links for the general public about the adverse effects of SSRIs. You can learn about the serotonin syndrome that can be caused by SSRIs and the SSRI discontinuation syndrome which may have occured at NIU. I'm a family practice doc who happens to have an interest in adverse drug reactions, privacy and the Second Amendment. I find the downplaying of the most serious reactions, killing and suicide, by the drug makers outrageous. According to a book reviewer, Dr. David Healy emphasized that, "depressives don't commit mayhem."

Antidepressants and Violence: Problems at the Interface of Medicine and Law

Healy is one of the co-authors.

If doctors ever saw an acute Serotonin Syndrome take place and had to stay with the person for the duration it would be a real eye opener. For those who do not understand it is basically like giving someone LSD and them having a bad trip. It can last for days. The antidote is Benzo's which doctors are terrified of because most misunderstand how to actually prescribe them for best results.

The portion of patients who seem to be more prone to it a lot of times have neurological sensory damage. That is the primary problem and they overlook the cognitive behavioral or cause and effects of the existing physical illness and instead treat it as a mental one. SSRI's are completely off my list. I am not totally anti-SSRI as I know they help some people in a lot of cases but the public needs to be made aware of their real risk.

Serotonin Syndrome can come at any time during SSRI usage and usually is triggered by something as simple as having a cold and taking OTC cough medications. I even remember a Freeper going through it live on a thread a few years back. Serotonin Syndrome can kill. The danger however is doctor and patient as well as family ignorance which can and should be addressed before it is dispensed to the patient. I caught myself before I went into it. I sat with my wife through a week of hell while the doctors tried to have her placed in a state mental institute and all the time insisting she needed more SSRI's. Her Xanax she had been taken and the Atavan they gave her with the SSRI in the hospital is likely all besides the Good Lord that kept her from dying from it. She came home Amnesic for about 48 hours and with a fresh bleeder on the Cat Scan as well.