Why is it that psychiatric medications are not part of the discussion when shooters are in the news?
Estimates are that 65 million adults and one in three children take prescription medicines that change how people think about themselves and others. They are the preferred method for dealing with behavioral and mental problems. They are the first resort for palliative care for a huge range of normal human emotions considered to be undesirable: sadness, moodiness, lack of focus, anxiety, injury, and so on.
Telehealth was liberalized in those days, which I saw as good news because it is a form of deregulation. What I had not considered is that it only makes medicalization more available to people who otherwise would not consider drugs as a first resort. If you want one of these so-called medications, you can probably get a prescription in 15 minutes, even without seeing a doctor, simply by answering a questionnaire.
It is a huge industry, one that is crucial to the revenue stream of modern medicine. They are understudied, overprescribed, and neglected as a causal factor in a huge number of life disruptions.
I’m guessing that you have your own stories about yourself or someone you know. We are all aware of this anecdotally, but the subject is close to being banned as something to discuss and study in the higher reaches of culture and media.
When you start asking questions, you are accused of “stigmatizing mental illness,” neglecting social conditions such as poverty, covering for the gun lobby, or otherwise deflecting from more important issues.
In the case of Shane Tamura, who shot up the Manhattan offices of BlackRock, likely intending to target the office of the NFL in the same building in retaliation for how he was treated, he was likely taking some medication for football brain injury. That could have affected his judgment. We do not know. But why are we discouraged even from asking the question?
Herein lies the problem. We do not know the scale of the problem because there is a taboo concerning studies. That should not exist. If active shooters are commonly on these medications, is that not a matter of some public interest, and would that fact not adjust the way we think about such drugs?
Right now, you can turn on the TV and see myriad ads for all sorts of psych meds, and they briefly include side effects, all of which seem awful and are just the beginning. I saw one recently that warned of “death.” Death! Otherwise, what they promise is an end to sadness and anxiety, which they deliver by numbing the capacity of the brain to function.
This is not a cure for a disease. It is a form of sedation, not unlike a chemical lobotomy. The lobotomy is considered unscientific and cruel today, something that a civilized person would never do, even though they were common only decades ago. Now we do not use physically invasive icepicks; we use chemical methods that seem to be more humane but have the same effects.
Shock therapy is also still around, just called something different, with machines that make it seem more palatable. Institutionalization is still a normal practice, but with drugs that people take daily, we have effectively turned homes and apartments into unattended psych wards.
When you show up at the doctor’s office, you are asked about your mental state. If you say you are depressed, you can easily be prescribed one of hundreds of drugs that have been little studied and are hardly understood, especially not by general practitioners. But they are throwing them around like candy, as if there is no downside.
No matter what you hear, these things are seriously addictive.
In this case, the studies were poorly designed and obviously so. They examined only short-term use, whereas most patients are on these drugs for years. If you think about it, it is utterly preposterous to claim that a brain-altering drug is not addictive. My goodness, lip balm and hair conditioner are addictive if you use them enough! All injected or applied chemicals cause alterations in physical functioning to which the body adapts, thus leading to withdrawals.
What possibly could be the purpose of studies that implausibly claim otherwise when any casual observer knows that this is false? Quite simply—and this answer will not surprise you—it’s because this is big business.
We commonly talk about the epidemic of mental illness, but this is another kind of epidemic: one in which the supposed cure (which it is not) is worse than the disease itself.
There is an element of tragedy in how the profession of psychiatry itself has come to be reduced to a priesthood that dispenses chemicals that alter brain functioning. The idea that mental illness consists of a chemical imbalance was long ago debunked, yet people still believe that a handful of pills will restore the balance. This is nothing but pseudo-science.
The modern discipline of psychiatry was founded by Sigmund Freud. His core claim was that there is something called the psyche in which resides the source of systematically abnormal behavior. A broken psyche, in his view, is not traceable to either moral/spiritual issues or physical maladies but rather a third sector: in the mind itself. The fix was neither moral correction nor surgery nor pills, but rather therapy.
It is for this reason that the Freudian revolution was seen as a humane alternative, a development in the progress of enlightenment.
Within a decade after he died, Freud’s discipline and work were already being distorted into something else, an excuse for surgery, institutionalization, and medical sedation. That is largely what it is today, in total violation of his core insight and principles.
An entire generation needs to be warned: Do not start these meds unless you are prepared for a lifetime of addiction. They might “solve” problems, but they cure nothing. They only hinder normal brain functioning, or they create the illusion of hyperfunctioning without the reality of it. Getting off of them poses grave dangers, and you will be left worse off than before.
