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Did Psychiatric Drugs Trigger Wakefield Massacre?

By John Breneman
February 2001

Did Michael McDermott go on his killing rampage in Wakefield last December because of psychiatric drugs? We haven’t heard much discussion about that issue.

Our attention has been focused on what McDermott’s defense lawyer will do. But that changes the entire debate. If the problems with psychiatric drugs are discussed only as a way for a murderer to avoid paying the penalty for his crime, most citizens will start with a biased attitude. They will dismiss any thought that drugs were the culprit.

This will make the drug companies very happy. They don’t want the public to understand the very grave dangers that are a part of Prozac and similar drugs. They want our attention focused on guns, mental illness and stress.

Caused Dozens of Murders
The anti-depressant drugs prescribed to McDermott have been indicted as the cause of dozens of murders and suicides nationwide.

Approximately one in every seven Americans, around 36 million, has used an anti-depressant. Approximately 6 million have used them as diet pills, with “phen/fen.” But a growing body of evidence shows these drugs cause aggressive behavior, and suicidal and homicidal urges.

McDermott was hospitalized because of a suicidal depression in 1987. He was diagnosed with depression, paranoia and schizophrenia. He was given anti-depressants known to doctors as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), which are designed to treat depression, anxiety and phobia by increasing brain serotonin levels. But a number of top psychiatrists, and books, claim some SSRIs cause suicidal, violent and murderous thoughts in many users. The police found a trinity of anti-depressants – Prozac, Paxil and Desyrel – in McDermott’s apartment.

Introduced in 1988, Prozac was the first of the new class of anti-depressants brought to market. Within two years, nearly 300 people had reported adverse reactions, according to Dr. Peter Bruggin in his book Talking Back to Prozac. Among these reactions were 14 murders, violent incidents and violent obsessions. Most of the 133 reported cases of crime and violence were self-mutilation or suicidal behavior, said Dr. Bruggin.

Some Prozac side effects listed on the bottle are hostility, psychosis, paranoia, delusions and manic reaction.

Harvard Doctors Agree
A number of experts, including Harvard psychiatrists, maintain that the new pharmaceuticals consumed by a lot of Americans today have dangerous side effects, like the provocation of suicidal, murderous and aggressive urges.

Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Martin Teicher was the first to suggest that Prozac can cause these urges. He found that close to four percent of patients on Prozac attempt or commit suicide. Dr. Teicher testified in the case of Gail Ann Ransom, a California woman who strangled her mother in 1990. He said Ransom underwent “a very striking personality change after taking the drug during therapy.” She became aggressive and obsessed with killing her mother. Dr. Teicher said this was similar to other Prozac patients he had seen, none of whom were aware of the changes in their behavior. Dr. Teicher said while many depressed patients consider suicide, “Prozac patients think of excessively violent ways to kill themselves or others,” according to a news story in the Fresno (Calif.) Bee.

Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a Harvard psychiatrist, who wrote Prozac Backlash: Overcoming the dangers of Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other anti-depressants, calls Prozac and its anti-depressant cousins overused, over-hyped and dangerous.

In the book, Dr. Glenmullen chronicles a lawsuit brought against drug-maker Eli Lilly by survivors of a workplace rampage. A Prozac-user, Joseph Wesbecker, went on a workplace massacre with an AK-47, killing and wounding co-workers. To the relief of Lilly, the 1994 trial was overshadowed by the concurrent O. J. Simpson trial, and Lilly was able to negotiate a secret agreement, according to the New York Times.

Another Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan O. Cole, one of America’s leading experts on psychiatric drugs, is outraged by the drug companies’ practice of minimizing the link between anti-depressant drugs and suicide. Cole claims none of the drug companies have done studies to determine whether these drugs can cause suicide.

But in a recent patent application for a new version of Prozac, Lilly admitted there is a link by noting that the new version will not produce side effects, including “akathisia, suicidal thoughts, and self-mutilation.” A federal lawsuit against Lilly was filed in Hawaii last year by the family of William Forsyth who fatally stabbed his wife and then stabbed himself 11 days after beginning a Prozac prescription.

Anti-depressants have also been related to road rage, according to Prozac: Panacea or Pandora, by Ann Blake Tracy. She notes people on anti-depressants who want to hurt or take the life of someone close to them and who also want to ram cars on the highway. En route to murder her mother, Gail Ransom was stopped by a California state trooper who gave her a ticket for speeding. Rosie Mysenburg, of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, points out “the time frame for these new drugs is exactly the same as the time frame for the 7 percent rise each year in road rage.”

McDermott passed a number of rigorous psychological tests in the Navy and also for Maine Yankee nuclear plant, where he worked from 1982–1988. The Navy psychological tests McDermott took were extremely difficult because they measured a person’s ability to handle the most stressful situations – spending three years below water in a nuclear submarine. He passed that test. Co-workers from different jobs characterized him as slightly eccentric but normal, some calling him bright, personable and articulate.

Ironically, depression has become pandemic in the richest and most privileged era in American history. Estimates of the extent of chronic depression in America have ranged from 8 percent to 60 percent. But the problem is widespread enough to qualify for a “depression awareness month.” Oddly, physicians say the epidemic is increasing, and affecting children like never before. In 1999, the World Health Organization predicted that suicide would be one of the main causes of death worldwide by 2005.