Fort Hood Shooter was in Treatment, Taking Psychiatric Medication at Time of Shooting

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Specialist Ivan Lopez, who is accused of killing three people and wounding 16 others at Ford Hood army base yesterday, had been examined by a psychiatrist within the past month and was in treatment for depression and PTSD. Lopez had been prescribed Ambien and was taking other medications to treat anxiety and depression, according to articles in the New York Times, USA Today, ABC News, CNN, and the Washington Post.

 

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Kermit Cole
Kermit Cole, MFT, founding editor of Mad in America, works in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a couples and family therapist. Inspired by Open Dialogue, he works as part of a team and consults with couples and families that have members identified as patients. His work in residential treatment — largely with severely traumatized and/or "psychotic" clients — led to an appreciation of the power and beauty of systemic philosophy and practice, as the alternative to the prevailing focus on individual pathology. A former film-maker, he has undergraduate and master's degrees in psychology from Harvard University, as well as an MFT degree from the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia. He is a doctoral candidate with the Taos Institute and the Free University of Brussels. You can reach him at [email protected].

10 COMMENTS

  1. Here’s another article about long term association of SSRI’s and other psych drugs being taken by most if not all public/school shooters:

    http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/25007/61/

    I do disagree with the article saying SSRI’s are the only drugs available in military since the military like the rest of the so called mental health death squad has been pushing the all too lucrative, brain damaging neuroleptics for everything including sleep problems, PTSD and other life problems/crises when they have been found to be not only ineffective but deadly.

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  2. Obviously I didn’t shoot anyone the day I bugged out and got crazy angry when I was on six or seven different “medications” for anxiety depression insomnia ADD ect ect. I was out of control smashing doors and windows in the house, anything that would break wile expressing my desire to just be dead already. This was about a decade ago when I was still screwed up on meds.

    I was all worn out from “akathisia” I JUST CAN’T F___ING RELAX DAMB IT !!!!

    WHAT DO YOU MEAN RELAX ? I CAN’T RELAX !!!!!! SHUT UP !!!!! GET OUT OF MY WAY !!!!!!

    Akathisia is a common side effect of neuroleptic drugs that may present with behavioral disturbances. There have been preliminary reports on the association between violence and akathisia. We report the first observational study of this relationship. Patients studied were from a special unit for violent patients. A closed-circuit television camera was installed in each of the corners in its dayroom. Incidents of assault plus the 5 minutes preceding each assault were recorded on videotape. Participants and bystanders were rated for the motor component of akathisia. For each of nine incidents, we compared the akathisia scores for participants and for bystanders. Both victims and assailants were akathisic before about half of all incidents; bystanders rarely were.

    Akathisia and violence: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1973544

    Neuroleptic-induced akathisia is listed in DSM-IV-TR (under medication-induced movement disorders). DSM states that “Akathisia may be associated with dysphoria, irritability, aggression or suicide attempts.” (p 801)

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  3. Notice how all those in power refuse to acknowledge the huge elephant in their dying rooms of lethal psych drugs causing violence, suicide, mass murder and other mayhem. It makes me sick to read Obama and others making their phony statements on behalf of the victims shot when the real victim is most likely the shooter (and their families) getting suckered to take lethal psych drugs to pad the pockets of the Big Pharma/Biopsychiatry/Corrupt Government Hacks cartel.

    There is no way that Obama and the rest of those in power can be ignorant of the lethal dangers of psych drugs like SSRI’s and neuroleptics given that many have made them aware of it via the huge number of mass killers on these deadly drugs. So, Obama and his cohorts have blood on their hands even more than the latest psych drug induced mass shooter!

    The fact that these corrupt government hacks are calling for more fascist Stalinist mental death laws to force more of these deadly drugs on the so called mentally ill they continue to scapegoat to keep Big Pharma and NRA millions padding their campaigns and pockets in general is pretty hard to take for sure. And who are the real dangerous, violent murderers? The psychopaths in power lying and covering up the truth about the mental death profession as a means of deadly fascist social control while killing millions in the process in the guise of “mental health treatment” are the real most dangerous members of society who should be curtailed in prison and get a taste of their own neuroleptic medicine to at least slow them down as the instraspecies predators they are.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2014/04/03/d6d39986-bb30-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html

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  4. NAMI and its Fuller Torrey cohorts have been using all these shootings to push more of their fascist agenda to force more bogus, life destroying stigmas and toxic drugs known to cause suicide, violence and tons of other deadly effects on the victims who have committed no crime or violence whatever. I find the timing of these shootings very suspicious now that all these draconian mental death laws that have been pushed so much by Fuller Torrey and like minded sadists for so long have been using these most likely psychiatric drug induced mass shootings to push more of this monstrosity in the guise of “mental health” as is typical of biopsychiatry in bed with fascist, corrupt government plutocracies like the U.S. It’s like the Iraq WMD con job to invade Iraq and America at the same time by robbing both countries of all their rights, democracy, wealth and everything else in the guise of patriotism and other bogus claims! And Bush as another drug company hack with family ties to Eli Lilly also pushed the mental death agenda to a great extreme.

    Note at the bottom of this article, we have another call from Boehner and others for keeping weapons from the so called mentally ill after the latest shooting most likely induced by lethal psych drugs like SSRI’s, Ambien and neuroleptics, enough to make anyone want to die!! So, the usual scapegoats of those with fraud DSM stigmas to make them easier targets are dredged up for every crisis the psychopaths at the top inflict.

    I agree that weapons of mass destruction should be kept from the mentally ill, which means all biopsychiatry/Big Pharma/government corrupt psychopaths/malignant narcissists should be imprisoned for their fraudulent mental death and other crimes against humanity and all toxic psych drugs, ECT and other brain damaging “treatments” and biopsychiatry should be banned forever.

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  5. Though the link between psychotropic medication and violence is very important, we must also not lose sight of the simple fact that if people did not have guns, then they could not shoot each other. Call me a dreamer and an unrealistic idealist, but as long as the NRA and the military-industrial complex control the American political agenda, as long as we continue to provide easy access to a wide range of lethal weaponry, as long as we continue to train (brainwash?) large numbers of impressionable youth in killing methods while at the same time providing them with all sorts of rationalizations legitimizing that killing (i.e. war on terror, war on drugs, love and protection of country, fighting evil etc. etc.), as long as we continue sending them to foreign lands where they can experience the crazy-making realities of shooting people and being shot at first hand, as long as we then handle returning veterans as financial ballast and fail to help them make sense of their experiences, then we will continue to experience tragic events like Fort Hood. It is not that mentally ill people should not have guns, NOBODY should have them!!

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  6. How many times must we read about these incidents before people wake up and realize that “your drug IS your problem.”

    I was well into middle age when a combo of Celexa, Xanax and Trazodone (for sleep) drove me to severe akathisia, agitation, bizarre and aggressive behavior, outbursts, problems on the job and an unrelenting urge to drink huge quantities of alcohol. All my p-doc would do was blame every symptom on my “broken brain” and increase my doses. I ended up attempting suicide and woke up in a hospital bed. It wasn’t until I was finally self-aware enough to get off of these pills and get my life back in order that things began to get better.

    Now I must keep a watch over my dear young nephew who is on Ritalin…and he looks awful. The fight never seems to end.

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