I’m still lost. I’ve heard whacko right wingers easily dismiss mass shootings as being the fruit of the pharmaceutical industry and SSRIs and other similar MoA products which is laughable.
But you seem to be saying something between the lines and I can’t decipher it. No biggie.
Maybe you're overthinking this. It's neither new nor complicated.
Harvard.edu:
The risk that antidepressants will incite violent or self-destructive actions is the subject of continuing controversy. In 2004, the FDA first initiated a Black Box Warning on SSRIs — its strongest available measure short of withdrawing a drug from the market. The warning is still placed on package inserts for all antidepressants in common use. It mentions the risk of suicidal thoughts, hostility, and agitation in children, teens and young adults.
and in addition to hostility, there can be emotional blunting and even detachment (quoted from
this):
‘Emotional blunting’ or ‘numbing’ has been described by people taking
antidepressants (Faulkner, 2016), and particularly Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs).
According to Sansone and Sansone (2010) it is characterised by an insidious onset, dose-dependence (with higher doses causing more symptoms) and complete resolution with discontinuation of the offending drug. They describe 2 elements to the experience:
- a behavioural syndrome of apathy and low motivation
- an emotional aspect of indifference, diminution of responsiveness and detachment.
and:
Emotion blunting may be experienced as both a helpful and unhelpful phenomenon. At a low level it may help a person to detach from their immediate problems, but at a higher level it can be very disabling.
Brief history of using
amphetamines for depression:
Depression
From the 1930s, amphetamine
was used to treat affective disorders,
obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD), and
schizophrenia.
However, in the 1950s and 1960s, amid growing concern about its adverse effects, it was replaced by newly available
antidepressants.
In rare cases, amphetamines are used alongside standard antidepressants to treat some types of depression that do not respond to other treatments, especially in people who also experience
fatigue and apathy.
In
a study that followed 65 patients taking amphetamines alongside normal medication, 38 "showed significant improvement, in particular with respect to energy, mood, and psychomotor activity."
According to the authors, side effects were minimal, and no drug dependency was seen.
College students and others often use Adderal or similar amphetamines to "self-medicate: for their depression but it's not effective and can
exacerbate depression and cause anxiety, among other side effects:
Specifically, using stimulants to self-medicate depression is counterproductive, as stimulants can precipitate depressive symptoms and exacerbate existing depression. Likewise, amphetamine stimulants can cause a host of adverse symptoms such as cardiac dysrhythmias, anxiety, high blood pressure, difficulty sleeping, diarrhea, dizziness, and unsteadiness.
9
~~~
In short, one needn't be a genius to see that a depressed person who is detached from his emotions and juiced up with amphetamines can go on a killing rampage. Lilly has paid millions and millions to cover up
various slaughters perpetrated by those on Prozac. (my emphasis)
But earlier this year, for the first time, Lilly came up against a family in the US who would not settle. The Forsyths wanted a hearing. Internal documents belonging to Lilly were produced in court. And although Lilly won the case - the jury decided it could not hold it responsible for Bill Forsyth Sr's death - it may have lost the argument, for those documents showed that Lilly knew as long as 20 years ago that Prozac can produce in some people a strange, agitated state of mind that can trigger in them an unstoppable urge to commit suicide or murder.
That article is from 1999. A lot of good that knowledge did. Even at that time there were more than 200 lawsuits against Ely Lilly:
Some 200 cases have come to court in the US. Victims and families of killers have sued the multi-national Eli Lilly, manufacturers of the world's most commercially successful drug. Until recently, not one case reached a verdict. Either it was dropped, or Lilly settled out of court, sometimes for millions of dollars - Lilly's defence has always been the same: blame the disease, not the drug. Depressed people get put on Prozac. Depressed people are often suicidal. Keep on taking the tablets.
~~~
In any case, sooner or later things will change.