Epoch Times - Is there a link between mass shootings and antidepressants? Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring explains.

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Oct. 28, 2025 - Epoch Times

04:28

Is there a link between mass shootings and antidepressants? Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring explains.

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	This is a very controversial area that does not get a lot of coverage.
	And this has turned up in a lot of discussions about school shootings, actually, that they notice that school shooters are taking SSRIs.
	And so I want to unpack that.
	But I want to start by saying this.
	I'm not trying to say that every single school shooter or mass shooting event is due to SSRIs.
	I think Clearly it's a multi-factorial problem.
	That said, the role that these antidepressants play has to be considered.
	And I want to talk a little bit about the drug labels quickly before I go into this, because I know some people, they hear this and they go, this is quackery.
	There can't be a link here.
	If you just look at the drug labels for Adderall and Ritalin, in the warnings and precautions, it already lists aggression and hostility.
	This is where they put the most important risks.
	If you look at SSRIs, it already lists there in the label that they increase the risk of suicidal behavior.
	It lists hostility, agitation, and violence.
	If you look at Abilify, which is an antipsychotic, homicidal ideation is already in there.
	And so what I want people to be aware of who are listening to this is these risks are actually already in the drug labels from the manufacturers.
	Now the question is, okay, sure, maybe there's some violence, maybe you can have homicidal ideation, but can this actually, you know, has this been linked to actual homicides?
	And time and time again, we've seen this go through the court system, and judges and juries have found that this has been involved.
	And perhaps the most well-known case of this was a case in Wyoming, and it involved a gentleman called Don Schell.
	He was an older man, and he had been exposed to Prozac in the past, an SSRI, and he had an agitated response to it, and they stopped it quickly.
	His next doctor, who did not know that he had that history in the past, gave him a drug called Paxil, which is an SSRI.
	Now, this shouldn't have happened given he already had a bad experience to the same drug class.
	And so they, so Don's new doctor put him on Paxil, and within a week, he killed his wife, he killed his daughter, and he killed his granddaughter, and then he shot himself.
	I mean, an unspeakable tragedy for the family.
	Now, the surviving son-in-law, his daughter's husband and the father of the grandchild that he lost, brought suit against SmithKline.
	This is before GSK had formed.
	And this was heard out before a jury in Wyoming, and they ruled in favor of Tobin.
	That was the name of the son-in-law who survived.
	He was given a million-dollar verdict.
	It was for failure to warn.
	SmithKline appealed it.
	It did not change the verdict.
	And so we already have court cases where judges, juries have heard the information and said, you know, if not for the drug, this wouldn't have happened.
	The same thing happened in Australia.
	A man strangled and killed his wife during a bad reaction to Paxil again.
	And the judge ruled there as well.
	If not for the drug, this wouldn't have happened.
	And there's been many other cases that have been described in a paper by David Healy, who really is the big expert on this, called Antidepressants and Violence, Intersection with the Law.
	And so this is already happening.
	I know we don't like to talk about it in the media.
	It's something that's very suppressed, but the courts are already dealing with this, and they are finding that these drugs are playing a role.
	What we know is that many of the mass shooters are exposed to antidepressants.
	In the case of some who are trans, there's also hormone medications as well, which can have a mood destabilizing effect.
	And so there is potential there that you get someone who is already unhappy and you put them on a medication that's known in rare instances to cause these issues.
	That can lead to or precipitate violence.
	Now, the problem is that we're really not looking at it.

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