dagblog - Comments for "For These Tragedies To End, We Must Change - SSRIs and Violence"

I've had Michael accuse me of

Michael Maiello — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:33:38 +0000

In reply to This is all well said. It's

I've had Michael accuse me of "obsessing" quite a bit and my focusing in on SSRIs might certainly be a case of that.

Before you get too concerned about that, it's also very natural for a writer to have gravitate towards a "beat." Michael is working on his second book about American political history, you know. :)

I don't have either

LULU — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:50:13 +0000

In reply to It's excellent advice,

I don't have either experience or expertise to give me any confident opinion of the veracity of anything on this subject but here is some more discussion of it.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/12/no-mentally-ill-people-would-not-...

I hope it has some value. Cheers, Orion and all.

Everything bad comes from

Orion — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:43:25 +0000

In reply to A couple of days before

Everything bad comes from social isolation. Bullying is social isolation, a mom being overprotective is social isolation, getting a mental health diagnosis and the resulting stigma is social isolation, etc. etc. Almost all violent people are people who have been pushed out of the normal social order for some reason or another.

We probably have more social isolation than is normal for most cultures because people in this country don't have solid identities. They aren't able to look across the street and recognize the neighbor as being his neighbor because they are from the same tribe - they look across the street and see their neighbor as being their neighbor because they have the same income. That's why this country is falling apart hard and fast. Most cultures in hard times would turn to their family and their clan - people in this culture don't have one.

This is all well said. It's

Orion — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:10:18 +0000

In reply to Orion, so many people (self

This is all well said.

It's also worth noting that SSRIs, autism or mental illness certainly don't play in to what on earth is going on. The shooter who killed all of those people at the Sikh temple was a white supremacist - chances are a guy like that may just have been drinking if he was abusing any substance at all.

In all the cases, you have guns getting in to the hands of people who are not at their most mentally fit as individuals. That shows a hole in the mental health field in this country in so many ways it is unbelievable - guns are that freely available and people who are not only homicidal but homicidal toward large mass groups of total strangers are not being committed. You cannot even commit anyone against their will if they are getting that bad!

I've personally taken this shooting to personally expell Asperger's from my life. Right before this, Asperger's was taken out of the DSM IV - making me wonder if the whole thing was ever real to begin with. Alot of Aspies are fake Aspies, I think - they have simply never really sat down and faced the fact they're an asshole and done something to change it like a normal person would.

As horrible as alot of my recent life has been, I've survived it and if anything, I'm suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder. A much more real disorder that I think is exhibited in my writing style and behavior on here. (I've had Michael accuse me of "obsessing" quite a bit and my focusing in on SSRIs might certainly be a case of that.)

The inner wasteland that

jollyroger — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 02:44:24 +0000

In reply to A couple of days before

The inner wasteland that manifests itself in bullying behavior is so obviously anti- human(e) it should cry out for drastic societal intervention at first light lest it become, when mature, the modus operandi of a private equity capitalist who could, in an unlucky country, be made president.

I medicate my ADD with

jollyroger — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 02:35:14 +0000

In reply to All I know is that the

I medicate my ADD with unseemly enthusiasm ...I recommend y'all to do likewise...SSRI's not so much...( but I "suffer" from an excess-150% normal- number of serotonin receptors...ymmv.)

It's excellent advice,

Michael Maiello — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:14:13 +0000

In reply to I doesn't have to be "hard."

It's excellent advice, Michael. The mainstream successful Orion piece in this regard will necessarily support the subjective with something else and it will have to rise above some of the din. To the extent that we Daggers can, we should keep an eye out for credible sources that he can use in his research.

Selective Serotonin Reuptake

nothere — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:03:01 +0000

In reply to For These Tragedies To End, We Must Change - SSRIs and Violence

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors had nothing to do with Adam Lanza's spree killing.

It stretches credibility to speculate that Asperger's had anything to do with his spree.

We will likely never know exactly what his illness was; and we have no indication that his mother was paranoid. Paranoia is a diagnosis with multiple criteria; not a colloquial carrying a meaning equivalent to "damn they craaa-zzee!"

I think the most certain thing that can be said is that Adam was paranoid; maybe paranoid-schizophrenic. It's also the case that he was at the age when such problems begin to really manifest.

All I know is that the

Aaron Carine — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:42:17 +0000

In reply to For These Tragedies To End, We Must Change - SSRIs and Violence

All I know is that the medication seems to have done me good. I'm not qualified to say anything else about anti-psychotic or anti-anxiety meds.

I doesn't have to be "hard."

Michael Wolraich — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:49:10 +0000

In reply to I doubt you're ever going to

I doesn't have to be "hard." Orion is not a scientist and not expected to be one. But if he wanted to influence public opinion by publishing an article in a mainstream magazine, say, he would have to conduct a more rigorous and even-handed investigation.

(That's not to say, Orion, that your own experience should not be part of it. Your experience is what makes it a compelling read. But you'd have to balance it with credible scientific opinion that at least calls the effects of SSRIs into question, even if it's not definitive.)