Indiana Injury Law Blog

Is there a relationship between certain anti-depressant medications and violence. Steve Wagner, the Director of Litigation & Prosecution for the advocate group Citizens Commission on Human Rights, www.cchr.org, thinks so. Steve recently authored the following report:

29 people have been killed and 62 wounded by school shooters taking violence- and suicide-inducing psychiatric drugs. These notorious schoolyard crimes include, among others, the 2005 Red Lake Indian Reservation shooting by Jeff Weise—on Prozac, the 1999 Columbine shooting by Eric Harris—on Luvox, and a 1998 shooting in Springfield, Oregon by Kip Kinkel—on Prozac. Including Monday morning's murder in a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, three shootings have occurred within the last week. One of these three shootings occurred at a school in Bailey, Colorado, less than an hour's drive from Columbine. Rocky Mountain News reports that outside Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, antidepressants were recovered from shooter Duane Morrison's jeep, after he took several girls hostage and killed one of the school girls before taking his own life.

This is to say nothing of the numerous other acts of seemingly "senseless violence" carried out by adults who were later exposed as having been under psychiatric treatment, including "Unabomber" Ted Kaczinski, Michael McDermott (on Prozac when he shot and killed seven co-workers in December 2000), John Hinckley, Jr. (attempted assassination of President Reagan), Byran Uyesugi (Hawaiian Xerox employee who shot and killed seven co-workers in November 1999), Mark David Chapman (assassinated John Lennon) and many others.

Was Charles Carl Roberts IV, who murdered five Amish schoolgirls before shooting himself, on these behavior-altering drugs, like so many ofther perpetrators of "senseless violence?"

The U.S. FDA warns that antidepressants can cause suicidal ideation, mania and psychosis. The manufacturers of one antidepressant, Effexor, now warn that the drug can cause homicidal ideation. This month, a study came out in the Public Library of Science-Medicine journal, conducted by Dr. David Healy, director of Cardiff's University's North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, which found that the antidepressant Paxil raises the risk of violence. Though the study focuses specifically on Paxil, Healy reasoned that other antidepressant drugs like Prozac, Celexa and Zoloft, most likely pose the same risk of violence. "We've got good evidence that the drugs can make people violent and you'd have to reason from that that there may be more episodes of violence," Healy said.

The connection to psychiatry's violence-inducing drugs and treatments has been made in incident after incident. It is acknowedged by the FDA and reputable medical researchers. With this knowledge, one can finally put some sense into these "senseless acts."

With three such incidents in the last week alone, investigators must look in the most obvious place for the causes for such psychotic, suicidal behavior and consider the potential culpability of the psychiatrists who prescribe such drugs. Click here to learn more about the connection between violence and antidepressants, or read the Report on Escalating International Warnings on Psychiatric Drugs, published by the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights.

Barry Rooth

Escalator injuries among children are becoming more prevalent according to a study published in the August issue of Pediatrics.

The study found that from 1990 through 2002, there were an estimated 26,000 escalator injuries among children. Those injuries included amputations, which was highest for children younger than five. More than half of the injured children are boys. Twelve thousand of those injuries occurred in children younger than five years of age. About two-thirds were caused by falls, and about 10% were from entrapment.

The authors identified certain design changes that made the escalators safer, including narrowing the space between the moving stairs and the stairway wall. While this design change provided added protection against personal injury cases for children, the authors emphasized the fact that parental and caregiver supervision was essential, especially when transporting children in strollers while riding escalators.

The US Product Safety Commission has issued recommendations to help prevent escalator-related injuries, which include:

Removal of drawstrings from children's clothing;
Supervision of young children while using an escalator;
Holding the child's hand or picking up the child when riding on the escalator;
Not transporting children on the escalator in a stroller or cart;
Facing forward and holding onto handrails to avoid falls;
Avoiding the sides of escalator steps to prevent entrapment between the escalator step and the sidewall.

Source: McGeehan J et al "Escalator-Related Injuries Among Children in the United States, 1990-2002" Pediatrics 2006; 118: e1-e6

Barry Rooth