The issue of antidepressant-induced homicide brings into focus the broader problems with prescription drugs, psychiatrist Dr. David Healy said during an Oct. 5 webinar.
Those problems include the failure of medical professionals to recognize serious side effects of drugs, and the justice system’s tendency to protect pharmaceutical companies — not people.
Healy, one of the United Kingdom’s foremost experts on serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) has studied antidepressants for 40 years as a researcher, clinician and consultant for Big Pharma.
In the webinar, he presented cases involving people who were living stable and healthy lives — until they were prescribed antidepressants, after which they became aggressive, delusional and homicidal.
Those impulses subsided once the people stopped taking the drugs. However, in many of the cases Healy highlighted, by the time they stopped taking the drugs, they had already committed homicide.
One well-documented case involved 12-year-old Christopher Pittman. Pittman began exhibiting aggressive behavior — fighting with other children and acting extremely agitated in church — almost immediately after taking Zoloft.
Less than one month after starting the drug, he said he heard a voice tell him to kill his grandparents, with whom he lived. That night, he shot them and burned down their house.
In 2005, Pittman was sentenced to 30 years in prison, after a jury declined to find that Zoloft had caused his homicidal behavior. However, U.S. Circuit Judge Daniel Pieper gave him the most lenient sentence possible. […]
— Read More: childrenshealthdefense.org
