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A Short Note on Antidepressants, Violence, and Kazmierczak

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Ed Silverman at Pharmalot has this post on the emerging (albeit very preliminary) evidence that gunman Stephen Kazmierczak had stopped taking his psychiatric medication before the killings at Northern Illinois University. As ABC news reports, there's evidence that Kazmierczak had a history of mental illness, which seems to have included depression, violence, and self mutilating behaviors. The comment thread of the Pharmalot post is particularly revealing in its predictability of responses from those who blame antidepressants for violent behavior among those with mental illness. Those critics, however, want it both ways: to blame antidepressants for violent behavior if someone takes them and to blame them as well if someone stops taking them and becomes violent due to the amorphous discontinuation syndrome purportedly associated with some of these medicines...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on February 16, 2008 (boomark / email).