Was Adam Lanza Spell-Bound?

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A gunning down of 20 children, a school principal, a school psychologist, 4 other adults, and the murderer's own mother occurred on Friday, December 14. This is a horrendous crime against humanity. Inhumane.

What could bring a 20-year old painfully shy man to act like a monster?

Dr. Peter Breggin, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, refers to the "spell-binding effect" of psychiatric medications which prevents the person taking the drugs from understanding that his behavior and thinking is being dramatically changed by the drugs and leading him to severe deterioration of judgment and bizarre impulses. Some people on the drugs do things, including violent acts, which they would never have done if they had not been on the drugs.

According to Mother Jones magazine, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Dig deeply into these stories and you find that most of the murderers were taking psychiatric meds or withdrawing from them (a situation that can cause the same or worse violent impulses as a result of spell-binding).

News agencies are reluctant to report the connection between psychiatric medicines and violence. This is the reason most of us remain ignorant of the connection. Why? It might demand the wealthy psychiatric drug companies reveal their faulty research and dishonest reporting about the negative side effects of psychiatric medications, especially the lack of knowledge about the impact of combining the drugs together, e.g. an anti-depressant with an anti-psychotic and an anti-anxiety medication taken at different times of the day. The effects can be devastating according to Anatomy of an Epidemic, a book that won Robert Whitaker the top prize for investigative journalism in 2010.

Joseph Mercola, MD, also exposed the faulty advertising and illegal marketing of the drug companies designed to sell more psychiatric medications that have led consumers into profound problems, including suicide. Here are some examples:

In July, GlaxoSmithKline was found guilty of the largest health fraud in US history, and was fined $3 billion after pleading guilty to three counts of criminal misdemeanor and other civil liabilities relating to a number of different drugs, including Paxil and Wellbutrin.

In June, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $2.2 billion for illegally marketing its drug Risperdal.

In 2009 Eli Lilly was fined $1.4 billion for the illegal marketing of its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.

Bristol Myers Squibb was fined $515 million in 2007 to settle charges of illegal marketing of Abilify to child psychiatrists.

Pfizer paid $301 million for illegal marketing of its drug Geodon.

AstraZeneca has paid out $520 million to settle illegal marketing charges of Seroquel.

In each of these cases, the drug manufacturers were targeting children, despite the fact that none of the drugs in question were approved for use in that age group. To understand how effective these illegal marketing schemes are consider that sales of antipsychotic drugs to children have increased eight-fold since 1993. Sales to teens have quintupled, while adult sales doubled in the same time frame. In 2008 alone, an estimated $6 billion was spent on off-label antipsychotics in the US, of which $5.4 billion was for uses based on uncertain evidence.

According to a featured article in Time magazine: "The settlements with the U.S. government were among the largest in history."

The news has not yet reported whether Adam Lanza, who also committed suicide after the shooting in Newtown's elementary school, was on psychiatric medications. We do know that he had Asberger's Syndrome, a milder version of Autism. Many people are given psychiatric medications to quell the behavioral issues arising from Asberger's, for without medication, people with this syndrome tend to act in unconventional, sometimes anti-social, aggressive ways.

Emedicine Health reveals that the behavioral symptoms of Asberger's "may include anxiety, attention problems, aggression, behavioral rigidity, mood disorders (particularly depression)". These are often treated with psychiatric medications, which, according to Dr. Breggin (and other thoughtful psychiatrists who are up to date with current research), can cause agitation, suicidal and homicidal thoughts and actions.

Yes, gun control is an important issue in preventing more massacres; however, with one in every five Americans now taking one or more psychiatric drugs, it becomes increasingly more important to educate ourselves about the risks of taking these drugs and other options for mental wellness that are less risky and less harmful. See Dr. Breggin's website and books for more information.

Adam Lanza might never have violently gunned down 20 children, 6 adults and his own mother and himself if he had been given adequate compassionate care and little or no psychiatric drugs.

We must think deeply together about this and act in ways to prevent more killings. Giving those with mental disturbance the humane care they need with a very cautious use of psychiatric drugs is an important step. Making sure we know the effects of psychiatric drugs, exposing what has been hidden by the drug manufacturers' research, is another step. Making sure people who are emotionally disturbed do not have access to guns is another important step. ALL are necessary.

This just might be the answer to ending the massacres.

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