Between 2004 and 2012 the FDA received 14,773 reports of psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects, including 1,531 cases of homicidal ideation/homicide, 3,287 cases of mania, and 8,219 cases of aggression.
According to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) an investigation into the link between psychiatric drugs and violence is long overdue when you take into consideration that between 2004 and 2012 the FDA received a staggering 14,773 reports of psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects.
With the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting that gun deaths in 2017 were the highest in almost 50 years at 39,733 many officials turned toward laws to restrict access to firearms in the United States following such tragic events as the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. However, this statistic paints an entirely different picture when viewed with another alarming trend, the surge in the number of Americans taking dangerous psychiatric drugs. [1]
Studies show that an estimated 40 million Americans take psychiatric drugs, antidepressants being the most common, and that from 1996 to 2013 the number of people filling a benzodiazepine prescription increased by 67 percent. Unlike the well-publicized opioid crisis, which has seen a 20%, decrease in prescribing every year since 2012, the prescription of benzodiazepines continues to rise. It is also known that of the nearly 410 psychiatric drug warnings, 27 warn of violence, aggression, hostility, mania, psychosis or homicidal ideation and 49 warn of self-harm or suicide/suicidal ideation. [2] [3] [4]
Even despite a review of the Food and Drug Administration’s Adverse Event Reporting System, which found that antidepressants and several other psychotropic drugs can trigger violence, this connection is not being taken into consideration by officials who instead focus on gun control and greater access to mental health services which all too often means simply more people on the very drugs that have been linked to violence. [5]
For the past 20 years, CCHR has been investigating and exposing the correlation between mass murder, violent crime, suicide and psychiatric drugs. During this time CCHR has reported that those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs have committed at least 36 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence. [4]
CCHR is urging lawmakers to look into the connection between psychiatric drugs and the deadly events that transpired across the country in 2018 due to the fact that between 2004 and 2012 the FDA’s safety information and adverse event reporting program, known as MedWatch, received a staggering 14,773 reports of psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects, including 1,531 cases of homicidal ideation/homicide, 3,287 cases of mania, and 8,219 cases of aggression. For more information please read Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide.
About CCHR: Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHR’s mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections. L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, first brought psychiatric imprisonment to wide public notice: “Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the ‘free world’ tortured, castrated, killed. All in the name of ‘mental health,’” he wrote in March 1969. For more information visit www.cchrflorida.org.
References:
[1] CDC Wonder Database https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D76;jsessionid=9B5BEF30FF76D1143F23BD54DCEC643A
[2] An estimated 40 million Americans take psychiatric drugs https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2016/12/14/what-psychiatric-drugs-are-americans-taking
[3] Benzodiazepines: our other prescription drug epidemic
https://www.statnews.com/2018/02/22/benzodiazepines-drug-epidemic/
[4] Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide
https://www.cchrint.org/pdfs/violence-report.pdf
[5] Psychiatric Drugs and Violence: A Review of FDA Data Finds A Link
