To say the least, this article made me a little upset. Disclaimer first: I am no sort of doctor or scientist and Im not claiming to be. Im just rolling with the facts I know and feelings I have. It seems as though this article is trying to put more blame on the medications than other important factors such as, but not limited to, the fact that theyre mentally ill. The first thing that stuck out to me was the fact that some of the cases the only drug they mentioned/blamed was Ritalin. In case you didnt know, that is an ADD/ADHD medication. I bet we all know someone on it, or the generic, or something similar. Wanna know why? Because ADHD and ADD is common. super common, and the rates of this drug being prescribed is higher than ever. So if were putting a lot of weight on Ritalin being the reason of shootings and violence, and therefore assuming people with attention disorders dangerous, you should all pull your kids out of school. Second, most of the others were on antidepressants. Wait. You mean the shooters werent mentally or emotionally stable? Big surprise. The factors that they chose to leave out were: 1. Were they abusing the medication? (taking too much, overdosing) 2. Were they using it properly, but stopped cold turkey for any reason? Stopping medications cold instead of easing off with a doctors help, is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. I just want that to be known. Your brain chemistry can be thrown into a wack doing that. Im not sure the science behind it, but if you need more reason than my word, please contact your doctor. If youre scared of your child doing either, please administer it to them yourselves. One commenter, Rich Pasco, put it nicely, As a scientist, I want to note that correlation does not imply causality. EVEN IF all these mass killers were taking psychotropic medications as stated, that does not PROVE that the medications CAUSED them to commit the murders. Any time correlation is observed, one must look for a possible common cause. PERHAPS the common cause in this case is that all these people committed the murders because they were mentally ill, AND they also were taking the medications because they were mentally ill. Obviously the medications didnt work as intended, which would be a better conclusion that to assume that the medications caused the violence. As another example: Many people who die of heart attacks were found to have been taking nitrates, but that doesnt prove that nitrates cause heart attacks; it proves that people who die of heart attacks and those who take nitrates both do so because of a common factor: heart disease. To infer that there would be fewer mass murders if psychotropic medications were eliminated is as faulty logic as to suggest that there would be fewer heart attacks if nitrates were eliminated. Another person replied and said, also want to add in that some of those mass murders were Antisocial Personality Disorder. Sociopaths, and psychopaths. This is genetic. So, we have to look at other sources that caused them to commit these crimes. Medication alone, whether it is the wrong dose or prescription, is not causality. This is a weak argument for gun advocacy. In fact, guns dont have much to do with any of these situations. If we were to say the same thing, and these people used bombs instead, I believe that people would be looking more into the why and not how. Youre probably like Holy crap, Breanna. Why are you defending these killers? I am not. If you really think about it youd realize that I, for one, do not want people wasting time thinking these medications are where the shooters went all wrong, or assuming now that everyone who is mentally ill is automatically dangerous. If youre going to waste time trying to figure out the reason for these shootings, move on from this one, because now I feel like were blaming stuff like this on anything we can get our hands on.
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 07:30:36 +0000
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