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Tucson, Arizona - Aurora, Colorado - Newtown, Connecticut. President Obama gun
control advocates called for a ban on assault weapons,
but is it really the guns that are the problem. Mental health professionals have
said that in
all these cases, the shooters run some kind of prescription medication.
My next guest says it just might be the pills
that are the problem. Joining me now psychiatrist and author of Medication of
Madness --
The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violent, Suicide and Crime.
Doctor Peter Bregman and doctor.
I love your message and that's why I asked you to come on the show because I
think
you've touched on something that is fascinating to me,
is the fact that there are these psychotic drugs out there and
I will give the audience your opinion about that I forget talk about this
before.
Well, there's no doubt that psychiatric drugs can cause violence
and the most widely used ones including, particularly,
the anti-depressants, the newer ones like Prozac and
Paxil, Celexa and also the benzodiazepine, the tranquilizers
like Xanax and Klonopin.
And then also the stimulant drugs we give to children
all of them have a significant association with violence.
If you take a look at all the reports to the FDA
about drug violence,
all the drugs that we use, most of them the vast majority have no association
with violence.
And then those three groups I just mentioned, psychiatric drugs,
had many, many more times the number
of reports of violence. It's all readily established. But you
have somebody come to you and
they are mentally ill, what do you do?
Because a lot of doctors will just you know get out the prescription pad
and write a
write a prescription. I for you talk about the fact that you've been doing
this for decades and that you have
cured a lot of mental illnesses with
zero drugs. Well,
I don't think in terms of curing mental illnesses as much as I think have
helping people overcome their problems, helping people over
come their anguish, their pain, their anger, their suffering.
And in my experience, and I think this is the absolute truth that really helps
people is a good solid caring relationship with somebody
and a therapist or psychiatrist, I'm a psychiatrist,
who says in effect you can take charge of your life,
you can be responsible for your life, you can learn how to handle your emotions
you can learn to live by better values. But that's not the current approach in
psychiatry you'll hear nothing and psychiatry
about taken charge of your life, taking, responsibility, living by
values. Instead, psychiatry turns people into
machines and says that you have a biochemical imbalance, which is untrue.
We've got a drug that can cure the biochemical imbalance, which is untrue.
And those things make people feel more helpless and more out of control.
So I think we need to get back to good solid human relationship as a way of
helping people.
Are you persona non grata that of the psychiatric association meetings?
Well, I suppose I might be subject to violence
when talking about that. Yes psychiatry is
just that handmade now of the pharmaceutical industry.
If you go to the big psychiatric meetings it's going to a drug company
carnival, they pay for everything.
Psychiatry, their journals are journals paid for by the drug companies,
meetings are paid for by the drug companies.
And we make a lot of money by doing ten-minute med checks.
You do a lot more financially that way than by sitting and talking
with somebody.
Psychiatry is lost its way, and I do think that the shootings
really very much involved psychiatric drugs. I was an
expert in cases surrounding Eric Harris from Columbine.
I got to really look at his medical records in, and you can see him
deteriorating
while taking an anti-depressant, Luvox, that he had in his bloodstream when
he committed the violence. Well, beyond the the common threat,
well, a lot of people say well the shootings the guns have been the common
threat,
you're talking about, yeah, but there's also
psychotic drugs are a common threat. I ever
a man I used to work with, sadly, I mean father of the year
great guy smart guy but I didn't know we suffer from depression
they changed the medication on him. He went home and he stabbed to death his
two little daughters.
And he says to this day, he's in prison and in North Carolina,
he says it was because of the fact that the drugs made him do it.
I never heard... but that seems to be yours.
Well, there's no question about, I've been involved in that
a case where a man on the second day of Paxil drowned his two children in
a bathtub and drowned himself.
There's a lot of cases like this. A woman who murdered one of her children tried to
*** another one
on Zoloft. So that which is now anti-depressants, so this
there's no lack of cases about this and I've looked at them and deaths
Medication Madness
I have 50 cases where I've seen the medical records
and interviewed people if they were alive, interviewed families
where suicide and violence was a major theme.
These are very serious problems.
well I identified your left outside I'm glad you're speaking out
about this I wanted to give you the form here
about to do it on this program too because I think your messages
is worth listening to a lot of people
don't hear it so doctor bray conductor Peter Bergen,
thank you so much, I appreciate your time. Thank you Tom, thank you.
It has happen all too often to troubled teenager gets his hand on a weapon
and lives were changed forever, but why? On-the-record investigates as boxes
Douglas Kennedy found out the trail can often lead rights
to the medicine chest me.
Two years ago, 16-year-old pouring bad scarred took a rifle to his high school
and held 23 classmates hostage. Describe around that time, how you were feeling?
In the morning I just I didn't really going school, felt sick didn't feel
like
milling no like I could get up very well so invective and
next day remember and you and detention center
bracelet on just one more apparently unexplainable
violent outburst at school, unexplainable to everyone,
but Corey's dad. So in your mind there's no doubt what happened here.
No doubt, medication do this I mean he was held at major
you-know-who hallusinations earlier, abnormal dreams which are also a Paxil
meditation.
That morning Corey was on a mix of anti-depressants
prescribed for what doctors call situational depression.
His father says the pills turn Corey from the sensitive teenage boy
to a volatile moroder, susceptible to blind rage.
Are you was the rebuttal to I mean is always been a good kid loves hugs all
you know is never watched violent videos on
and taught meditation stored you know about that but we realize it was telling
aggression problems.
You know, he was out of character. At Fox News, we found the bats card story
with anti-depressants compelling, so we investigated further.
We found a disturbing number of recent school shooters
were either on medication or were experiencing withdrawal.
The list includes 15 year old Kip Kinkel withdrawing from Prozac when he
shot 22 classmates
killing two after murdering his mother and stepfather
at his home in Springfield, Oregon. 14-year-old Elizabeth Busch
on Prozac when she blast away a fellow students in Williamsport, Pennsylvania,
wounding one. 30-year-old Jason Hartman
on Effexor and Zelexa, he opened fire at his California high school,
wounding 5.
15 years old Sean Cooper on a mix of antidepressants
when he shot students in Idaho. 15-year-old T.J. Solomon,
also on a mix of anti-depressants when he aimed his shotgun
at classmates in Conyers, Georgia wounding 6.
17-year-old Eric Harris on Luvox when he and partner Dylan Klobold
killed 12 classmates and a teacher in the bloodiest school massacre yet,
Columbine. One of the things that
in the past we have known about depression is it very very rarely leads
to violence.
It's only been since the advent of these new SSRI drugs
that we have a *** is sometimes even mass ***
taking antidepressant drugs.
do some input
information you should be aware of call your doctor if you have unusual changes
in mood behavior
thoughts of suicide. Antidepressants can increase the same children teens and
young adults.
Call your doctor if you develop fever, stiff muscles, conclusions
as these may be signs of a life-threatening leak