The media overkill and hype regarding the recent Connecticut school shootings has been sickening. There have also been very short-sighted, emotionally hysterical calls for more gun control, more State disarmament of the civilian population.
I managed to survive hearing another discussion on the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour that was broadcast on WGBH radio last night. Judy Woodruff had a panel on to discuss the issues involved with the school shootings. Two doctors on the panel, a PhD psychologist and an MD pediatrician, couldn’t wait to say, “Thank goodness for the Affordable Care Act,” what a “giant step” we took with that, in their belief that the false issue of “mental illness” needs to be addressed here.
I thought I was going to toss my cookies. These are the influential people regarding “health policy” for all Americans, and whose judgments we seek regarding why kids go on murderous rampages! (Doh!)
No, “doctors,” the problem is not “mental illness” with kids who become monsters. One problem is our sick, demented culture of death and destruction. Another problem, which I believe is probably relevant here, is the prescription drug culture.
Doctors and the government schools are handing out “behavior-modification” and emotion-suppressing drugs to the kids like candy. The worst of these drugs, to my knowledge, are the SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) anti-depressants. The well-known Prozak is an SSRI drug.
But first what these ultra-authoritarian State-parent substitutes do is label normal kids “hyperactive,” “defiant,” or “oppositional.” Then the authoritarians force the drugs on the kids really to suppress the kids’ true emotions and to shut them up. Of course they’re “oppositional” and “defiant,” because as innocent little kids they inherently perceive you wacko hypocrite authoritarian adults in their lives for what you really are, and they don’t like it!
The government-controlled schools stifle the kids’ natural tendencies toward creativity and productivity, which they express through play, curiosity and self-expression. I think one reason why many teachers feel compelled to suppress and punish a child’s own self-directed personality and curiosity is the teachers’ own long-suppressed (and now self-suppressed) desire for knowledge and truth, and many teachers nowadays are themselves lacking in adequate reading and comprehension skills as well.
Of course, there are always extreme examples of a child who won’t stop disrupting the class. The answer to that is to get that kid out of that class. But I digress.
And because our culture now is so infantalized, and is one of immediate-gratification, impatience and short-sightedness, it is easier for the “authorities” (including many immature parents out there) to just label a kid as “oppositional” or “defiant,” or “hyperactive,” despite that that is just a natural part of being a child, and label him as “mentally ill,” and drug him up, rather than trying to find out why he’s acting that way. Much of the time, I would bet, such children are “high” on bad foods, snacks filled with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup is cancerous poison as we now well know.
Many kids are loaded with these junk foods and it affects their behaviors and their emotions. And because of the negative effects these foods have on the digestive process, the actual nutrients they could have been getting from their other more nutritious foods are not absorbing into their system. So regardless of how well their parents might feed them, because of the junk foods, they are actually nevertheless malnourished, and that affects their brain functioning which affects their behaviors and their emotions.
So labeling a child “mentally ill” is already a bad thing, because they are not mentally ill, and then worse, rather than dealing with the actual causes of disruptive or depressed behaviors, the authoritarians give the kids these drugs, especially the SSRIs. The SSRIs have been a common factor amongst some of these mass shootings. One of the Columbine School shooters had been given Zoloft and Luvox. And, like Jon Rappoport, I, too want to know if the Newtown, Connecticut Shooter Adam Lanza was being given these kinds of medication.
Now, I have searched and searched, but I have been unable to confirm whether or not the Virginia Tech or Aurora theater shooters were actually on SSRI anti-depressants. Like Frank Reynolds, I, too want confirmation.
PrisonPlanet has this post-Virginia Tech review of the previous links between anti-depressants and violence. And the Citizens Commission on Human Rights has this very thorough Fact Sheets page. It is sickening the collusion amongst the pharmaceutical industry (a.k.a. “Big Pharma”), doctors, the media and government institutions to suppress information and the truth about these prescription drugs’ association with violent behaviors.
Some time ago, a doctor told me that she prescribed the dangerous SSRIs, but wouldn’t prescribe Xanax or other benzodiazepines, the other main class of anti-depressants/anti-anxiety drugs. She said it was because Xanax “is addictive.” So, does that mean that you would leave a patient in excruciating pain rather than prescribe pain killers, many of which are also addictive? You see, just because something is “addictive,” that should not be a reason to not prescribe something. Just inform the patient of what a drug could cause, and make sure the patient understands the importance of a designated schedule of taking the drug, and then a period of gradual withdrawal to end it, and stick to the schedule. I wish doctors would trust the patient to be responsible and stop treating patients like babies. Our society in general is one in which the “authorities” treat everyone else like babies. (By the way, one herbal alternative to Xanax et al is Valerian.)
So anyway, this labeling and stigmatizing of kids, and then drugging them up with dangerous, unhealthy drugs needs to stop. Parents and teachers and other “authorities” need to stop labeling and stigmatizing kids. That, to me, is just another form of child abuse.
And it’s a shame that our society is allowing the drug-pushing bordering on criminality of the Big Pharma-Government-Media complex. That needs to stop, too.
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