Gun Control or Antidepressant Control?

Are antidepressants being prescribed too often and too much? Has the definition of clinical depression become too broad? And why are mass shootings now being linked to antidepressant use? The risk that antidepressants will ignite violent or self-destructive behavior has been the subject of renewed controversy.

After evidence that several gunmen involved in mass shootings were taking antidepressants during the time of their outburst, a number of threads have been appearing on the Web regarding this issue, but the media refuses to bring it up.

CNN’s Sanjay Gupta & Former Secretary of Homeland Security Address Psychiatric Drug/Violence Connection in School Shootings

For the first time ever, and for a brief moment in time, two knowledgeable and highly credentialed public figures have commented on the fact that psychiatric medications cause violence and must be considered suspect in the case of the Newtown shooter. But then, as if it never happened, and as if psychiatric drugs could not possibly be implicated in violence, the issue was dropped by the media.

World Net Daily News: The Giant, Gaping hole in Sandy Hook Reporting—what psychiatric medications shooter may have been taking

But where, I’d like to ask my colleagues in the media, is the reporting about the psychiatric medications the perpetrator – who had been under treatment for mental-health problems – may have been taking? After all, Mark and Louise Tambascio, family friends of the shooter and his mother, were interviewed on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” during which Louise Tambascio told correspondent Scott Pelley: “I know he was on medication and everything, but she homeschooled him at home cause he couldn’t deal with the school classes sometimes, so she just homeschooled Adam at home. And that was her life.” And here, Tambascio tells ABC News, “I knew he was on medication, but that’s all I know.”

Connecticut Shooting: Long-shot DNA tests ordered on Lanza, psych med questions ignored

investigators remain silent on the questions regarding Adam Lanza’s reported history of psychiatric medications. Some classes of these drugs have clearly linked to violent behavior. Other scientists regard the drugs as causative of episodes of violent behavior. The Los Angeles Times reported Lanza’s former babysitter said Lanza was on some sort of medication since age 10. The former baby sitter, Ryan Kraft, is now an aerospace engineer in Hermosa Beach. Kraft said: “I know there was something administered. I’m not sure what.”