Brian was 17-years-old when the family doctor diagnosed him with depression and put him on Zoloft. Once again, the family was not warned about any side effects of the drug and in fact, the doctor told Joyce, "even if a person is drinking or doing drugs, that Zoloft works well with them."
Brian killed a woman five days after he began taking the drug. Authorities found no illegal drugs in his system, only Zoloft.
The psychiatrist that examined him after the crime, a faculty member at Yale University, Dr James Merkangis, testified that Brian had suffered a manic reaction to Zoloft.
Six months after Brian's arrest, another boy at his high school, Jeff Franklin, attacked his parents and three of his brothers and sisters with an ax while on Prozac.
"Both of his parents died and Jeff is now serving two life sentences," Joyce said. "This is not a coincidence," she warns, "there is a common denominator, teenager, severely depressed, on an SSRI antidepressant."
According to Joyce, "there are 6 to 8 million children on these drugs."
"The question is why are we handing these drugs out like candy," she wants to know.
"The answer is a $17 billion a year business," she says.
In Washington state, on April 15, 2001, 16-year-old Cory Baadsgaard took a hunting rifle to school and held a teacher and 23 classmates hostage for 45 minutes.
A few months earlier, Corey had been diagnosed as having a social anxiety disorder, and was prescribed Paxil by the family doctor. When Paxil did not seem to work, the doctor upped the dose.
A few months later when Paxil still did not seem to work, the doctor took Corey off the drug and placed him on another SSRI, Effexor, with instructions to gradually increase the dose to 300 milligrams over 3 weeks.
The day that Corey took the first full 300 milligram dose, he did not feel well so he stayed home from school and went back to bed. That evening he woke up in a juvenile detention center.
Corey had no idea what he had done. "I asked one of the members of the juvenile detention center and I found out that I had taken my high-powered rifle that I use for hunting to my third period class, took 23 of my classmates hostage and teacher hostage," he said.
Cory has no recollection of his actions that day although he had plenty of time to try and remember as he sat in jail for 14 months before being released based on testimony by psychiatrists explaining the adverse effects of Paxil and Effexor.
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