The Common Link

There has been a furious and heated debate over the cause of school violence. The media points a finger at violent video games. But most people who play these games don't commit violence. Others say it's the lack of discipline and guidance from parents. Sure that has an effect on kids, but that still doesn't turn them into killers. Then, there are those who blame guns, so we get into gun control issues.

But in all these school shootings there is one common link that gets touched on, then glanced over: psychiatric drugs like Ritalin and Prozac.

Almost all of the shooters (and if you read the various news stories this will back me up) had taken, or been on, psychiatric drugs around the time of the killings. Note: None of them killed before taking these drugs.

Can I say definitively that the drugs were the sole cause of the killings? No. These were troubled teens to begin with. But the drugs—which have side-effects of violent or suicidal tendencies—certainly pushed them over the edge.

I don't think any children should be put on these drugs. Previous generations survived without them, and they endured wars, the Depression and other horrific events. When you give potent side-effect laden drugs to emotionally disturbed children, it adds the fuse to the bomb.

We'll never know if these teens would have killed if they hadn't been on these drugs. But let's not take a chance on this happening again. Watch the video from Fox News and fight to keep kids off drugs.

Fox National News exposes the link between psychiatric drugs and school shootings:
Click here to watch 3 min. video

Naughty Kids Need Discipline Not Drugs

"Official figures from the Department of Health show that more than 1,000 prescriptions for powerful drugs are doled out every day to treat behavioural disorders in children. GPs prescribed drugs such as Ritalin, known as the "chemical cosh*", on 384,000 occasions last year - a fourfold increase since 1997. An estimated 32,000 children are being drugged every day, at a cost to the NHS of £13.5million a year.

"So far, so bad. But I also learn that drug companies secretly fund support groups for parents of kids diagnosed with behavioural problems. In other words, they are fueling this Ritalin bonanza - despite evidence linking their very profitable drugs to sudden deaths and heart problems."

—Naughty Kids Need Discipline Not Drugs, Paul Routledge, Sunday Mirror, 17 November 2006

*a heavy stick or bar used as a weapon

Another School Massacre Linked to Antidepressants

Why-oh-why is the government still supporting psychiatric programs in the schools? Why isn't the public at large in an uproar about kids being given drugs like Prozac and Ritalin? The side-effects of these drugs are dangerous, and often—deadly. Why are psychiatrists still being called in to "help" when they clearly fail time and again, finally resorting to drugs. And the cycle goes on.

Let Cho Seung-Hui be the last of these deadly killers. Protect your children. Tell your government to stop funding psychiatric programs!

Whom Do You Trust? Obviously Not Psychiatrists

That's the conclusion of the most recent annual Gallup poll—as posted on the APA's own web site.

"Only 38 percent of Americans believe that psychiatrists adhere to 'high' or 'very high' ethical standards..."

"...the majority of respondents rated psychiatrists' honesty and ethical standards as 'average' (42 percent) or 'low' or 'very low' (12 percent)."

—Data from Psychiatry News March 2, 2007, Volume 42, Number 5, page 18, Eve Bender, "Public Has Trust Issues With Psychiatrists, Survey Finds"

Bloggus Interruptus

Sorry for the long interruption but we moved our home and business cross-country. An extensive escrow (with everything packed), and setup delays at this end, caused total backup. I'll try to make up for lost time. :)