Anti-depressants and Homicide, Suicide

Terribly sad case of a 12 year old kid sentenced to 30 years in jail, for the brutal murder of his grandparents. Christopher Pittman is now 19, and his murder case was recently appealed to the supreme court, and was denied a hearing today, which is terribly tragic given his background and the fact that he was on heavy doses of Zoloft.

(from the CNN article linked to above) "The Food and Drug Administration in 2004 ordered Zoloft and other such medications to carry warnings of an increased risk of suicidal behavior in children."

The extremely weak and unproven theory of depression treatment consists of keeping serotonin in the synapses longer, supposedly "regulating" the baseline of the neurotransmitter in the brain (a baseline that has never been established). Seemingly, the difference between most SSRI's and placebos is the restoration of will power that was formerly missing.

It explains why certain people live by the stuff - many have trouble getting out of bed in the morning; they don't feel like they can function. It seems many anti-deps enable you to act on your will better.

Now imagine giving a drug with those effects to someone with suicidal or homicidal tendencies. It certainly provides one possible explanation for why we're seeing these violent homicides/suicides and finding out the perpetrators are usually dosed with some kind of SSRI.

In Christopher Pittman's case:

"At the time of the crime, the boy had bounced around homes for years, experiencing a half dozen family splits and divorces after his mother had twice abandoned him as a child. She has not been in Pittman's life for years."

"Just days before [the shooting], a doctor had begun prescribing Zoloft, another antidepressant. The family contends the abrupt substitution of drugs caused a bad chemical reaction, triggering violent outbursts."

Most interesting, Pfizer's [maker of Zoloft] comments about the trial:

"[Zoloft] didn't cause his [Pittman's] problems, nor did the medication drive him to commit murder. On these two points, both Pfizer and the jury agree."

This awful, heartless comment is half right. Pittman had problems alright, none of which were his fault either - he was bounced around from home to home with no semblance of structure while often getting abused. No, Zoloft didn't cause his problems either, though it's ironic it's prescribed to somehow cure them.

But did Zoloft drive him to commit murder? In a sense, I would absolutely agree. I believe they provided him with the will to act on his understandable impulses - he was a troubled, angry, and neglected teenager. And it saddens me that despite the overwhelming evidence of a correlation between SSRI's and homicidal/suicidal behavior, this poor young man will be in jail until his 40's. This kid didn't need psychotropic drugs, he needed attention and someone to care for him, and that simple fact is grossly misunderstood.

Here is the old bizarre Zoloft ad that looks like something out of a Kurt Vonngeut novel:

"While the cuase is unknown, depression may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals in nerve cells in the brain, presscription Zoloft works to correct his imbalance."



Thank you Zoloft for spreading this toxic crap into the American public (232 million prescriptions of Zoloft and other anti-deps in 2007) without really knowing what's causing the depression you're so-called treating.

I'd say we're better off with ecstacy.