reported<\/a>, under the headline \u201cTerror in Littleton,\u201d that Harris had been rejected by the US Marines, just five days before the massacre, for taking Luvox. The Times noted that \u201cpatients taking Luvox are warned that if combined with other drugs, including alcohol, the drug can cause extreme agitation progressing to delirium, coma and death. The package insert also carries a warning about suicide.\u201d<\/p>\nThere was some speculation that Harris had tried to go cold turkey after being rejected by the Marines, and that this might have contributed, somehow, to the day\u2019s bloody events. While officials said neither of the killers had drugs or alcohol in their system at time of death, the coroner refused to specify whether they had been tested for antidepressants, including Luvox.<\/p>\n
Columbine launched a wave of nationwide soul-searching on a range of issues from gun control to goth culture \u2013 but the role of mind-altering substances in mass killings has never been properly examined. It became a polarizing issue: a question of left versus right. The political left didn\u2019t think we should be investigating the role of antidepressants at all.<\/p>\n
But with the right in power, things might have changed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new head of Health and Human Services, has been in the job just a few months, but there are already the beginnings of a Republican movement for an inquiry into SSRIs and their possible role in violent attacks. In Tennessee, a law was passed earlier this year mandating a full drug screening for anybody who kills four or more people. The law established by the HB-1349\/SB-1146 bill will require a detailed toxicology report to be made available to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe law isn\u2019t just about Tennessee,\u201d said Sheila Matthews, co-founder of advocacy group AbleChild, which helped draft the bill. \u201cIt\u2019s a blueprint for dismantling the wall of secrecy protecting industries that profit from ignorance. When someone commits mass murder, the public has a right to know if mind-altering drugs played a role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skeptics on the other side of the political aisle usually point to a 2019 study, \u201cThe Myth of School Shooters and Psychotropic Medication,\u201d published in the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law.<\/p>\n
In truth, data is lacking. But there\u2019s plenty of reason to believe antidepressants, and SSRIs in particular, might be linked to outbursts of violent behavior. For example, a Swedish study from 2020 which involved more than three-quarters of a million people showed a clear link between SSRI use and violent crime, especially in 15- to 34-year-olds. The risk was elevated even up to 12 weeks after discontinuation of the drugs. The FDA\u2019s adverse-event reporting system shows that SSRIs are consistently associated with violence among adults.<\/p>\n
For many on the left, though, the \u201cright wing\u201d concern about antidepressants and mass killings is simply explained away as a smokescreen, an attempt to divert attention from the real issue, which is guns. But removing guns doesn\u2019t disappear violence.<\/p>\n
The \u201csmokescreen\u201d argument was used by Tennessee state representative James Carter during the debate over HB-1349\/SB-1146. It was also claimed, by another Democratic lawmaker, that toxicology screening might somehow violate the rights of the dead killer to privacy in death, which is an objection I don\u2019t think anybody had ever seriously considered before \u2013 with good reason.<\/p>\n
Behind it all \u2013 behind the contention and the arguments \u2013 stand the drug companies and the money and power they accrue from the ever-increasing medicalization of society. Between 2015 and 2018, 13.2 percent\u00a0 of American adults reported taking antidepressants in the previous 30 days. Almost a quarter of all American women aged 60 and over take them. We\u2019re talking about tens of millions of people \u2013 at least 25 million \u2013 on antidepressants in the US alone. And the rate of prescription is rising, of course.<\/p>\n
Yet for the millions of prescriptions and billions of dollars in revenue, studies often continue to show that antidepressants are barely more effective at improving mood than placebo. Exercise can do at least as much, if not more, to relieve the symptoms of depression. What measurable improvement antidepressants bring is so small some researchers doubt it even exists. It may simply be a margin of error.<\/p>\n
Almost 40 years after SSRIs were first introduced to the market, there\u2019s no conclusive evidence that the serotonin theory of depression is even true. The assumption behind the creation of the drugs in the first place, that imbalances of serotonin in the brain cause depression, has never been proven. It doesn\u2019t need to be, because a drug\u2019s mechanism of action \u2013 how it works \u2013 doesn\u2019t have to be established before it\u2019s licensed for use. School shootings are the product of a society that is profoundly sick.<\/p>\n
But America has been taking her medicine scrupulously for decades. Instead of making her better, it might well be making everything far worse.<\/p>\n
This article was originally published in\u00a0The Spectator<\/a>\u2019s July 2025 World edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered Columbine High School in Colorado, armed to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4315],"tags":[39564,66503,105,4326,3912,218,40025,16,15,8520],"class_list":{"0":"post-156756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-antidepressants","9":"tag-fluvoxamine","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-medication","12":"tag-medicine","13":"tag-mental-health","14":"tag-ssris","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-violence"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114623624407829594","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}