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Orlando shooting suspect mentally ill
Jason Rodriguez killed one person and wounded five others at an engineering firm in Orlando, Florida. His lawyer says Rodriguez is mentally ill. Hours earlier stressed-out army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas and wounded 30 others. Much is being made of the fact that he is a Muslim but he may have been taking the same drugs he handed out to stressed-out soldiers every day. A few weeks ago Warren mom Tanya Friedly received a 6-year sentence for drugging and attempting to burn her two children. She did accomplish burning down her house. DetNews quoted Friedly's mom as saying her daughter may have suffered a breakdown last fall after she began taking new medications for depression and anxiety, her boyfriend lost his job and she was faced with losing her home to foreclosure. How is it that every time somebody goes on a mass murder/suicide rampage like Columbine or Virginia Tech, they are on some sort of psychiatric drug or being treated or recently treated in the mental health system? Maybe today's psychiatric drugs which carry Black Box warnings that they can cause people to commit suicide, homicide and violent acts are just gasoline we are pouring on the mental health fire. No wonder things are getting worse. The treatment isn't working.
Psychiatric Drugs Cause Violent Behavior
I was interested in the story on Tanya Friedly who drugged and attempted to burn her kids. Her actions and her physical appearance are eerily similar to Andrea Yates, the mom who drowned her five kids. See the picture of Yates at: http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm
Yates, like Friedly, was being treated for depression. Yates was prescribed a long list of drugs such as the anti-psychotics Risperdal and Zyprexa as well as the anti-depressants Paxil and Effexor. It is this last drug, Effexor that she was on when she drowned all five children and that drug now carries a Black Box warning that it can cause not just suicidal ideation but also homicidal ideation. It is widely accepted that such drugs played a key role in mass murder events like Columbine and Red Lake.
Clearly Tanya Friedly was on various psychiatric medications. A Sept 11 DetNews story quotes her mom as saying "her daughter may have suffered a breakdown last fall after she began taking new medications for depression and anxiety, her boyfriend lost his job and she was faced with losing her home to foreclosure." Anti-depressants and anti-psychotics are almost always involved in this kind of senseless violence where people are scratching their heads trying to figure out what makes people do these things.
Mom who tried to drug & burn kids
I was very interested in the story on Tanya Friedly who drugged and attempted to burn her kids. Her actions and even her physical appearance are eerily similar to Andrea Yates, the mom who drowned her five kids. See the picture of Yates at the following link: http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm
Yates, like Friedly, was being treated for depression. Yates was prescribed a long list of drugs such as the anti-psychotics Risperdal and Zyprexa as well as the anti-depressants Paxil and Effexor. It is this last drug, Effexor that she was on when she drowned all five children and that drug now carries a Black Box warning that it can cause not just suicidal ideation but homicidal ideation. It is also now widely accepted that such drugs played a key role in mass murder events like Columbine and Red Lake.
Clearly Tanya Friedly was on various psychiatric medications. A Sept 11 DetNews story quotes her mom as saying "her daughter may have suffered a breakdown last fall after she began taking new medications for depression and anxiety, her boyfriend lost his job and she was faced with losing her home to foreclosure." Anti-depressants and anti-psychotics are almost always involved in this kind of senseless violence where people are scratching their heads trying to figure out what makes people do these things.
Soldier Kills five
Recent DetNews stories describe an army Sergeant who was receiving mental health treatment in Iraq and got into an argument and shot and killed five other American soldiers at the treatment center. This is a story that reads right out of Columbine.
A recent Men's Health article titled "The War...On Drugs" points out that"12 percent of soldiers in Iraq and 15 percent in Afghanistan reported taking antidepressants, antianxiety medications or sleeping pills." "In other words, thousands of American fighters armed with the latest killing technology are taking prescription drugs that the Federal Aviation Administration considers too dangerous for commercial pilots.
Unfortunately, the drug companies are now pushing on our military the same drugs that have caused suicide, homicide and violent behavior in our schools for the last 20 years. Just last month workplace and family mass murders were being reported on average of two per week. Many of the killers were reported to have been getting psychiatric treatment.
The vast, vast majority of people receiving mental health treatment today are put on antidepressants or similar acting drugs. Even the anti-smoking drug Chantix and the sleep medication Ambien CR come with "Black Box" warnings that they can cause suicidal behavior. I sure hope a few people are connecting the dots here. You can be pretty sure that the Taliban are not making mental patients out of their troops as stressful as the war may be for them. How can America win the war on terror while putting its troops on drugs that make them kill their own troops and family?
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