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Thu 19 Apr, 2007 09:23 pm
Quote:Reports that Cho had been taking antidepressants once again turn the spotlight on the uneasy question of what role these powerful medications might have played in yet another campus massacre.
It's the same bloody-morning-after question I've been asking since 1998, when we learned 15-year old Oregon school shooter Kip Kinkel, who opened fire in his school cafeteria, had been on Prozac. Nearly ten years -- and numerous school-shooters-on-prescription-meds -- later, we're still waiting for answers.
Now let me make it perfectly clear that I am NOT saying that antidepressants are what caused Cho to go off the deep end and kill 32 people and then himself (indeed, school and law enforcement officials haven't yet disclosed what specific meds were found among his effects). And I'm NOT saying that there aren't thousands of people who benefit from such medication. What I AM saying is that it is absurd -- and incredibly irresponsible -- for our leaders, and our culture, not to be fully investigating the correlation between antidepressants and manic/suicidal behavior.
Despite disturbing evidence of drug-induced reactions, the number of children being given mood-altering drugs continues to soar. America now has over 8 million kids on such drugs.
Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, has vehemently denied numerous claims that the drug causes violent or suicidal reactions. But the company's own documents admit that "nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, inner restlessness (akathisia), suicidal thoughts, self mutilation, manic behavior" are among the "usual adverse effects" of the medication. And a clinical trial found that Prozac caused mania in 6 percent of the children studied.
Can there be any doubt that Cho was exhibiting many of these adverse effects during his reign of terror in Blacksburg? His rambling, multi-media diatribe seems like a textbook example of manic behavior. The question is, was his manic behavior purely the result of a sick mind or was drug-induced psychosis part of the toxic psychological mix?
We don't know. But we do know that one school shooter after another was on prescription drugs. Kip Kinkel was taking Prozac. Columbine killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox. Red Lake Indian Reservation shooter Jeff Weise was taking Prozac. James Wilson, who shot 2 elementary school kids in Greenwood, South Carolina, was taking anti-depressants. Conyers, Georgia school shooter T.J. Solomon was on ritalin. Is this just a coincidence?
Again, we don't know. But here are some of the questions we need answers to:
1. It's been reported by the New York Times that Cho was on prescription medications. Which ones? Who prescribed them? How long had he been taking them?
2. If the drugs were prescribed when he was admitted to the New River Community Services center near Virginia Tech in December 2005, which doctor kept refilling his prescriptions? And what was the diagnosis?
3. What kind of medical and/or psychological follow-up was there? Or was Cho one of the many people put on antidepressants without a thorough and ongoing monitoring of the results and side effects?
America's blogs and op-ed pages are teeming with discussions about the impact Monday's carnage will have on America's relationship with guns. It's well-past time to also embark on a national discussion about the potentially deadly side effects of our pill-for-every-ill culture.
And for the discussion to really begin, we need answers to all these questions. The lives of our children could be riding on the answers.
Arianna Huffington
The Huffington Post
Whatever it's relationship to these events, the use of mind-altering drugs in growing kids is scary stuff. The entire nervous system is still pruning it's connections at this point, and connections that are active get preserved. Who knows what kind of stuff from the child brain that should go away gets preserved? Some stuff that children do routinely is absolutely antisocial.
8 million kids, if it's true, really worries me. There's no way 8 million kids need these drugs (as opposed to, I don't know, major changes in the way they live), especially when we don't really know everything they do. New serotonin receptors are found out every month, in very important places.
(And then we try to tell them, "Don't do drugs." I was a jaded, cynical kid when we didn't even have television. I can't imagine how I'd turn out if I was growing up now.)
I'm open to all this information. Am not inclined to dump on the drug companies immediately, in this particular instance but not all, while watching that there are sometimes adverse effects. I'm no drug company fan, generally speaking, but also not entirely against them. Well, mostly anti.
My own totally non pay-attentionable take, as a lay person, is that he was an undiagnosed psychotic with other complicating problems, or that he was a person with excruciating problems brought to psychosis. How illuminating is that, as I don't know anything.
Jelly and Spanky?
Quote:Cho nicknamed his imaginary girlfriend "Jelly" and she in turn referred to him as "Spanky", a former roommate said yesterday.
www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph
And it appears that Cho also had psychosexual problems as well as a very active imaginary life.
In both Chicago and Seattle, I was on campuses of -- economical, let's say -- colleges where there was an odd and sad phenomenon of kids from China and Korea being taken advantage of because they were so freaked out by their surroundings and by parental and cultural pressures. A number of sham Christian groups (among a larger number of more or less legitimate ones, I'm sure) would use the Bible to bring these kids -- used to complete parental control and away from home for the first time -- into the fold and ultimately take considerable control of their lives and their finances.
Not saying that's at play here, and not knowing anything about the circumstances of this kids life beyond the first paragraph (reliable?) on wikipedia. Just saying that I've been around kids in similar circumstances who have made very, very bad personal decisions in a desparate fog.
This may be the cutoff from my observation of the universe and oh-stop-already.
that wasn't a response to p'dog..
'T's all right.
I don't even get it.
And, p'dog, listening on that.
I'm trying to remember, I have had a friend in the mid seventies who taught english as a second language at some scummy place in LA, as a new LA person. Total rook, she was new to LA from Oklahoma and in her early twenties. She described this place as the pit of despond. Of course she left, and we lucked out when she became our lab dishwasher. (Oh, and then got a degree and then was an NBC anchor, and then a newspaper editor. That is, she was and is sharp.)
I'm guessing there has been a fervid industry of exploitation....
Doesn't really sound like this kid ever needed drugs to be crazy, sounds more like there were red flags waving around all over the place for the last few years.
Two things came together like a binary bomb formula here, i.e. the idea of having lunatics walking around on the streets like that was normal, and the idea of having schools be "gun free zones". Nothing good could come of that.
How many times do you need to see it?
If one passenger on United 93 had had a pistol, they'd all probably be alive today.
If one person on each of the two planes which flew into the trade towers had had a pistol, thousands of lives might have been saved.
If one person in each of these VT classrooms had a pistol on him, there would likely still have been killings, but not 33 of them.
I think about myself in places where the language and culture are foreign. It can be hard to discern hospitality from manipulation, good intentions from malice.
(my earlier comment was that I didn't need to hear about his psychosexual stuff).
On my friend who in passing washed the test tubes, now 30 years ago, she is a sharp observer. Had an eye to what a scam that place she'd been hired at was.
None of us listening had the brains to put two and two together and think of ways to shut places like that down.
I imagine that anything you could devise to shut 'em down (in the broader world, outside your own immediate sphere of influence) would also shut down some of the folks who really mean to help other folks out. Wheat and chaff and whatnot (except that we've become very adept at separating the wheat from the chaff, haven't we?)...
Well of course it does. Look at governments.
And all the firearms were purchased through legal channels, if not necessarily legally (I don't know the particulars of the local ordinances or the transactions). Huh.
Edit [Moderator]: Links removed
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