http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/less-talk-more-medicine/?ref=health"The switch from talk therapy to medications has swept psychiatric practices and hospitals, leaving many older psychiatrists feeling unhappy and inadequate. A 2005 government survey found that just 11 percent of psychiatrists provided talk therapy to all patients, a share that had been falling for years and has most likely fallen more since. Psychiatric hospitals that once offered patients months of talk therapy now discharge them within days with only pills."
November 20, 1986: Rod Matthews, 14, beat a classmate to death with a bat in the
woods near his house in Canton, Massachusetts. Though Rod was extremely
bright, he was put on Ritalin when he was in third grade.
September 26, 1988: 19-year-old James Wilson went on a shooting rampage at the
Greenwood Elementary School in South Carolina. Two children were killed and
seven others and two teachers were wounded. Wilson had been treated by
Greenwood psychiatrist, Willie Moseley. Since the age of 14, Wilson had been
given a mixture of psychiatric drugs. He was withdrawing from Xanax at the time
of the shooting spree.
October 17, 1995: Brian E. Pruitt, 16, fatally stabbed his grandparents. The
prosecutor in his murder trial said: “His intent was to kill, not just to cause great
bodily harm.” Pruitt had a history of psychiatric treatment and had been prescribed
“medication.”
February 19, 1996: Timmy Becton, 10, grabbed his three-year-old niece as a
shield and aimed a shotgun at a sheriff’s deputy who accompanied a truant officer
to his Florida home. Becton had been taken to a psychiatrist in January to cure his
dislike of school and was put on Prozac. His parents said that when the dosage of
the drug was increased, Timmy had violent mood swings and that he would “get
really angry....”
September 27, 1997: A 16-year-old, Jackson Township, New Jersey boy, Sam
Manzie raped and strangled to death an 11-year-old boy who was selling door-to-
door for the local Parent-Teacher Association. Manzie then took a “trophy photo”
of the dead boy, the cord from the clock radio still around his neck. Manzie was
under psychiatric care at the time and being “medicated.” He reportedly told his
mother, “I wasn’t killing that little boy. I was killing [my doctor] because he
didn’t listen to me.”
May 21, 1998: Before going on a wild shooting spree at his Springfield, Oregon
high school that left two dead and 22 injured, 14-year-old Kip Kinkel had been
attending anger control classes and was reportedly taking Prozac. He had also
reportedly taken Ritalin. Kinkel also shot his parents, killing them.
April 16, 1999: Shawn Cooper, 16, of Notus, Idaho, rode the bus to school with a
shotgun wrapped in a blanket. He pointed the gun at a secretary and students, then
shot twice into a door and at the floor. He had a death list, but told one girl he
wouldn’t hurt anyone. He surrendered. He was taking Ritalin.
April 20, 1999: While on Luvox, an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake
Inhibitor, a type of antidepressant) antidepressant, 18-year-old Eric Harris
masterminded the killing of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in
Littleton, Colorado. He and his partner, Dylan Klebold, 17, then shot themselves.
March 7, 2001: Elizabeth Bush took a loaded .22-caliber revolver to Bishop
Neumann Junior-Senior High School and sat through a Mass before she then went
to the school’s cafeteria and fired the gun at a fellow student, wounding her in the
right shoulder. Elizabeth was on Prozac.
March 22, 2001: At age 18, Jason Hoffman was on Effexor and Celexa, both
antidepressants, when he wounded one teacher and three students at California’s
Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, in 2001.
April 10, 2001: Sixteen-year-old Cory Baadsgaard, from Washington, took a rifle
to his high school and held 23 classmates and a teacher hostage. He had been
taking the antidepressant Effexor.
April 20, 2001: T.J. Solomon, 15, was on a mix of antidepressants when he shot
and wounded six at his Conyers, Georgia High School.
March 25, 2005: Jeff Weise, 16, shot dead his grandparents, then went to his
school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota where he killed 9 before
killing himself. He was taking Prozac.
October 10, 2007: 14-year-old Asa Coon from Cleveland, Ohio, stormed through his
school with a gun in each hand, shooting and wounding four before taking his own life.
Court records show Coon had been placed on the antidepressant Trazodone.
November 7, 2007: 18-year-old Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen had been taking
antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High
School in southern Finland, then committed suicide.
February 14, 2008: 27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak shot and killed five people and
wounded 16 others in Dekalb, Illinois before killing himself in a Northern Illinois
University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac,
Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amount of Xanax in
his system.
