The Decades of Evidence That SSRI Antidepressants Cause Mass Shootings

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• a minority of people who take SSRIs greatly benefit from them (particularly those who have deficient methylation), while others (particularly those who have excessive methylation or deficient liver metabolism of SSRIs) tend to have the worst reactions (e.g., violent psychosis).

• high rates of psychiatric medication usage in the modern left and big Pharma buying out the Democratic party during Obama’s presidency.

• each time a mass shooting happens, the same script is repeated (we need to ban all guns and have more mental health care [i.e. psyche meds] for everyone).

• One of the most common arguments used to dismiss the link between SSRIs and psychotic violence is that people who are mentally ill are more likely to be on psyche meds, so the “correlation” between psyche meds and psychotic violence is simply a product of pre-existing mental illness and would have happened independently of the psyche med. However, while claiming “correlation is not causation” makes it possible to refute this link while sounding intelligent in the process, there are a few major problems with this argument. First, there is a lot of evidence tying SSRI usage to these events, including clinical trial data that was hidden from the public. Since that evidence was not covered in Tucker or Walsh’s presentation, it will be the focus of this article. Second, there is a black-box warning on the SSRIs for them increasing the risk of suicide, something which can only be possible if some degree of causation does in fact exist. Third, these psychotic events are completely out of character for the individuals who commit them, and in many cases they report a very similar (and disconcerting) narrative of what they experienced prior to and during the shooting.

• Akathisia (and psychosis) are known side effects of cocaine, methamphetamine, SSRIs, antipsychotics, and ADHD stimulant medications. However, while the common triggers have been identified, the actual mechanism for akathisia is still poorly understood and theorized to result from alterations in the center of the brain involved in movement. These behavioral changes are so unusual and disturbing there are often simply described as the individual appearing to be possessed.

• Note: like many other mass shooters, these actions were completely out of character for Barajas. His brother (who he lived with) “was at a loss for what was going on in his brother's mind,” “didn’t know of any connections his brother had to the park” and stated “I didn’t think he was a dangerous person."

• Feeling depressed, naturally, is painful and needs to be addressed, but even worse is "anti-depressant depression"

• Akathisia is often a precursor to violence/suicide. Most prescribers have no idea what akathisia is or looks like. When patients describe akathisia, many times the doctors think it’s their “disease” getting worse and layer on more pills