Cho Docs Released
As we know now, the man who committed mass murder at Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui Cho, was subject to psychological and psychiatric intervention several times while on campus. Some of what disturbed professors were plays like Richard McBeef, a takeoff on Macbeth that took things a little too far.
On Wednesday, the university finally released the documents that were “lost” after the shootings. They reveal a great consistent gap in the psychiatric system, and one that can’t easily be remedied. Though the documents attest that Cho was interviewed several times, he was lucid and able to say that he wasn’t a threat to himself or others. This is typically the standard that merits commitment, and if a person avers that he’s not a danger, we have to take that at face value. We can’t just go around virtually incarcerating people for being strange.
In the case of one incident, a roommate reported concerns of suicidal ideation on Cho’s part. But Cho voluntarily went to the counseling center to discuss it, and was clearly not psychotic or delusional. He was, to all appearances, under control. Much of what was done (physical tests, etc.) is standard and mandatory, and some might say detracts from really engaging. But on the other hand, if the person is suffering due to a physical problem, this must be discovered.
Here are two pages from that incident report (sorry for the formatting issues):
In this case, I don’t see particular misconduct. Which is the problem. It’s impossible to know a person’s state of mind with any surety. And maybe that’s good, in an existential way. But a later communication breakdown seems to have been a concern. From the New York Times:
A state panel convened by Gov. Tim Kaine faulted the campus center for failing to “connect the dots” related to the dangers of Mr. Cho’s mental condition.
Investigators from that panel concluded that campus officials were not aware of the judge’s order requiring that Mr. Cho receive treatment.
As for those missing documents, the director of the center who “inadvertently,” he said, took them home, was fired. No surprise there.
What’s sad about looking at the records is that it’s not clear what could have been done for this agonized young man. I know from my experience teaching and that of my friends in academia that students write bizarre shit, and you can’t assume that every one of them will kill people on your campus. You don’t know when to worry, and what about. And when does it stifle creativity?
Some of the documents indicate that Cho was seen with frequency, and that should’ve been a red flag. There was clearly knowledge that something was wrong. But again, what to do? Was a 302 (involuntary commitment) in order? That’s a slippery slope, to say the least.
This is not to say there weren’t major, major red flags, in these yellow pages (not all of which are downloaded here) in particular. Note the things that changed — that’s always a key question people in counseling take note of. When habits change, something is wrong, and Cho knew this, which is why he was seeking help. The designation of “Troubled” was ominous, and the deferral of filling out a form was a mistake, obviously — perhaps why the director of the center thought it best to accidentally take things home with him.
I’ll be interested to hear what you all have to say. Oh, and to those who might say that I’m giving too much space to a sensational, violent case — which of course represents a freak episode in the life of people with mental illnesses — I see your point. But this can’t go unremarked by me. The mainstream media has their say; I won’t be silent just because I don’t like the fact that this happened.
liz | 9:02 PM | Uncategorized, criminal justice system, violence
It looks like something was brewing but it blew the lid off before anyone could see it. You can’t look inside a soul with that much efficiency but I do believe much greater effort and attention needs to be paid.
This is a really difficult case.
Clearly the documents indicate that something was wrong with the student. However, what can the doctors do if that student doesn’t open up. Hospitalize him when there’s no indication of harm to self or others? That’s a slippery slope. Like you alluded to, being weird does not automatically mean a person has issues.
It’s a very sad story, and I just can’t see how it could have been remedied. Then again, I don’t have a degree in psychiatry.
Nobody in their right mind would believe the story about the counselor taking Cho’s records home a year before the rampage. I imagine the last year and a half of treatment records were burned.
The Blacksburg newspaper reported the next day , April 9, 2007, that the police took Cho’s computer because it appeared he had been ordering antidepressants from his computer. Cho probably thought he could save money this way, rather than buy them through a regular pharmacy.
The New York Times reported that Cho’s roomate saw him take his precription medication at 6:00 a.m. that morning, April 8, 2007. Since Cho’s toxicology report was never released, we will never know what med or meds were in his system.
The Physicians Desk Reference states that SSRI antidepressants and all antidepressants can cause mania, psychosis, abnormal thinking, paranoia, hostility, etc. These side effects can also appear during withdrawal.
Go to http://www.SSRIstories.com where there are over 3,200 cases, with the full media article available, involving bizarre murders, suicides, school shootings [48 of these] and murder-suicides – all of which involve SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, etc, . The media article usually tells which SSRI antidepressant the perpetrator was taking or had been using.
I believe that Cho was one of those taking an antidepressant at the time of the rampage but, of course, I have no way of proving this.
SSRIstories only collects news articles where someone was on antidepressants and committed some criminal act. It leaves out four or five orders of magnitude more cases where someone was taking an SSRI and didn’t commit a crime, and about the same number of cases where someone committed a crime and wasn’t on an SSRI.
It just strikes me as skewed, but that’s just a personal opinion.
Of course, not everyone who takes an SSRI is going to commit a crime!
I would say there are more like 49 or 50 people where someone was taking an SSRI and didn’t commit a crime. If everyone committed a crime while on an SSRI, then even pharma and the medical rofessionals would have to halt their usage.
Still, one out of fifty people committing a crime while on an SSRI is a huge number. In fact, it would be in the millions. SSRI stories is only collecting the “tip of the iceberg” as most reporters [and physicians] never stop to think that the person might have developed abnormal thinking, mania and psychosis on an SSRI even though these adverse reactions are NOT listed as rare in the insert. Therefore, the reporters don’t even question whether the perpetrator was taking an antidepressant.
Cho’s case had to be hushed. 16 BILLION a year is the figure for antidepressant sales. It makes the Columbia drug cartel’s profits look like Mary Poppins. Also, by driving people nuts on antidepressants, pharma can then sell them antipsychotics and mood stabilizers for an enormous profit too. Can’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Let’s try to keep things in their proper perspective.
Long before the advent of the newer antidepressants in the 1950’s there have been incalculable suicides and atrocities of similar nature throughout history.
I guess if one wants to be comforted and rationalize that psychotropic medications are the more recent cause of these events then one could probably rationalize some other cause like the drinking water being responsible for the insanity of the Crusades, the Holocaust or good ole Lizzie Borden, Jozef Stalin, Hideki Tojo, Ismail Enver, Benito Mussolini and the likes but we certainly can rule out the newer psychotropic medications.
And while we’re at it maybe Dawdy and his legends may also want to correlate psychotropic medications to the insanity and atrocities perpetrated and committed by Mao Ze-Dong, Pol Pot, Menghistu, Yakubu Gowon, Leonid Brezhnev, Jean Kambanda, Suharto, Saddam Hussein, Tito, Mullah Omar, Idi Amin, Osama Bin Laden, Al Zarqawi, Augusto Pinochet and the generals running Myanmar/Burma to name but a few. All of the cases contained on SSRIstories.com are nothing more than a pittance and pale in comparison to the atrocities in the few cases I’ve cited.
There simply are no quantitative diagnostic means or tests to definitively link psychotropic medications to these events. These are theories and attempted correlations and where one comes up with a statistic that “Still, one out of fifty people committing a crime while on an SSRI is a huge number” is ludicrous, in my opinion. Certainly to offset such a statement would be the fact that 100% of the crimes committed prior to the 1950’s were committed by those not taking any antidepressants nor do I have any idea of the total number of crimes committed world wide in that time period but it certainly has to be substantial.
I suggest establishing a blog site and have everyone who has taken antidepressants and not committed suicide or attempted any crime report in. Maybe then you’ll have a more accurate and rational accounting or at least some kind of comparison.
Until then I guess I’ll just continue reading the biased positions of what I consider the anti-psychiatry/anti-psychotropic medication minority.
Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com
I think it is sad that Herb of VNS depression does not take seriously the terrible calamities that are happening to some people on antidepressants, especially the new SSRI & SNRI antidepressants.
I am not in the least antipsychiatry or even antipsychotopric medication oriented. When antidepressants were first marketed in 1959 phsyciains were informed of their dangers to make people psychotic or manic and they were very careful to whom they gave these older antidepressants. But even the older antidepressants were not as “serotonergic” as the new ones and thus they were not quite as dangerous to most people.
It is tragic that the APA is not more “scientific” oriented. They should demand to have revealed all of the coroner’s reports, the toxicology reports from all these mass shooters.
Before the introduction of Prozac in Dec. 1987, there was only one big SCHOOL shooting. This was Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in 1965 or 66. [the tower shooting].
Charles Whitman was found to have a brain tumor which could have caused psychosis. Physicians debated about this tumor in Life and Time Magazine for over a year. Most decided that the tumor was the cause of the rampage.
Charles Whitman did not kill himself like the mass shooters do today. No, he was killed by the police. The same was true of James Huberty, the McDonald’s killer in 1984. He was killed by the police.
We have had 8 major school shootings since the early 1990’s. These perpetrators were all on antidepressants. They all killed themselves.
I have here an article about the McDonald’s killer. It shows that most murderers have some kind of brain damage from chemicals as did the McDonald’s shooter.
Here is the article on the McDonald’s killer
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/1281671.html
On a very ordinary July day in 1984, James Oliver Huberty walked through the door of a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California, and into the pages of infamy. “Society had its chance. I’m going hunting. Hunting humans,” the unemployed security guard announced as he methodically unpacked a 12-ga. pump shotgun, 9mm pistol and 9mm semiautomatic carbine. He killed 21 people before being shot to death by a police sharpshooter.
A radical new theory that helps to explain what made Huberty snap could trigger an equally radical change in the way we deal with violence. If it proves correct, it could lead to changes in law enforcement that take a bigger bite out of violent crime than putting a cop on every corner ever would.
After the massacre, the medical examiner’s office ordered an exhaustive series of tests on Huberty’s remains. What they found was startling. “He had the highest cadmium level we had ever seen in a human being,” recalls William J. Walsh, president of the Pfeiffer Treatment Center of Naperville, Illinois, and an authority on the link between metal poisoning and behavior. “I remember getting a call from the assistant medical examiner who was working on the case. ‘I have one question for you,’ he said. ‘If Huberty had this much cadmium in his body, why wasn’t he dead?’”
Suspect metals
Cadmium kills by destroying the kidneys. As investigators looked more deeply into Huberty’s background, they discovered that the metal had indeed nearly killed him, twice. On each occasion, emergency room teams had coaxed his failing kidneys back from the brink, Walsh reports.
There was no mystery about the source of the cadmium. Before coming to California, Huberty had worked as a welder. “During an exit interview his employer asked him why he was leaving. He said that the fumes were making him crazy,” says Walsh. Strange as this tale may seem, it is a familiar story to Walsh. He had seen similar off-the-scale metal readings in scalp hair samples from the most notorious mass murderers and serial killers. The evidence has made Walsh a firm believer that the body’s inability to manage several common metals can spell the difference between good and evil.
Since 1989, he and his staff at Pfeiffer, an outpatient treatment center, have been working with children, mostly young boys, who have displayed severe behavioral problems. “We’re talking about kids who are terrors at age one and torturing the cat when they are two,” he says. Chiefly by adjusting the children’s diets, he says, the institute has been able to prevent troubled children from becoming ruined adults.
Walsh is not the only one to draw a line between certain metals and behavioral problems. Roger D. Masters, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, is also intrigued by the connection. Like Walsh, Masters does volunteer work with prisoners. But while Walsha chemical engineer by training looks inward at the imbalances of metals in individuals, Masters looks outward, toward the effects of metals on communities.
RosieC says:
“Of course, not everyone who takes an SSRI is going to commit a crime! I would say there are more like 49 or 50 people where someone was taking an SSRI and didn’t commit a crime.”
What do you mean by, “I would say …?” Is that a reported statistic or did you just make it up?
Hi RosieC,
Once again, let’s try to keep things in their proper perspective and in doing so I’d appreciate you’re not attributing to me that which I’ve not expressed or that which you may have assumed I said.
“…Herb of VNS depression does not take seriously the terrible calamities that are happening to some people on antidepressants, especially the new SSRI & SNRI antidepressants.” — RosieC
Taken in the proper order I am extremely concerned and take very seriously the symptoms of MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) and other serious mood disorders. From my very, very long time perspective as a support person and caregiver I am reasonably educated as to the numerous treatment options and their potential serious side-effects as well as the potential withdrawal difficulties. I recognize that you are sincere and concerned about these matters but the fact remains a percentage of patients may experience what you refer to as “terrible calamities” but not all. But then again I am familiar with my spouse’s case history and a number of others in my former circle of support group members who had no such experiences. This is not to negate that these negative experiences do not exist but I’ll reemphasize preparedness through my long time advocacy and endorsement for patient and/or one’s support person education of these illnesses, medications, treatments and/or therapies and to collaborate with a trusted, knowledgeable and licensed psychiatric professional and to make un-coerced medical decisions and then to hope for best.
You’ve digressed and lost me with your discussion of toxic heavy metals when the discussion we were addressing relates to antidepressants although you apparently maintain some agreement with my long held position that mood disorders can be manifested by a malfunctioning of the bio-neurochemistry of the brain contrary some of the anti-psychiatry dogma.
Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com
Blah blah blah. If it wasn’t for SSRIs and other antidepressants a whole lot of people would be way worse off. Seriously, get off the trip of saying that SSRIs are the devil. You can go sit in a corner with all of the people who claim that all of psychiatry and every medicine available is toxic. If it wasn’t for modern medicine I wouldn’t even be alive.
Anyway, the Cho thing is just par for the course I think. Nothing about the case surprises me, except that it doesn’t happen MORE often. I don’t think that mental patients are violent, in fact, it is a testament to the NON-VIOLENCE of the mentally ill that terrible tragedies don’t happen as often. If “normal” people had to go through the complete bullshit that mental patients have to go through, there would probably be a shooting every day. I know that sounds bad. I’m not advocating violence or anything or condoning it in any way, I’m just saying that people do snap and when your cord is shorter it is way easier to snap.
And, Cho’s case looks so typical to me–shuffle patient through triage or interview with some lame “counselor” or M.D., rotate, filter and repeat. If I had a dollar for every time I had been shuffled through some ER or other lame intervention place without proper treatment I would be very rich. AND most of the time I was actually PSYCHOTIC!!! I am just lucky I didn’t end up dead and I didn’t accidentally hurt anyone else along the way.
Well, I just wanted to say that everyone thinks that Cho’s case was so out of the ordinary, but actually what strikes me is how ORDINARY his journey really was. THAT is the truly sad part.
Here is the warning issued by the FDA on March 22, 2004 in regard to the SSRI & SNRI antidepressants.
Paragraphs four & five read: “Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric. Although FDA has not concluded that these symptoms are a precursor to either worsening of depression or the emergence of suicidal impulses, there is concern that patients who experience one or more of these symptoms may be at increased risk for worsening depression or suicidality. Therefore, therapy should be evaluated, and medications may need to be discontinued, when symptoms are severe, abrupt in onset, or were not part of the patient’s presenting symptoms.”
“If a decision is made to discontinue treatment, certain of these medications should be tapered rather than stopped abruptly (see labeling for individual drug products for details).”
http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/antidepressants/AntidepressanstPHA.htm
FDA Public Health Advisory
Worsening Depression and Suicidality in Patients
Being Treated With Antidepressant
March 22, 2004
Today the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked manufacturers of the following antidepressant drugs to include in their labeling a Warning statement that recommends close observation of adult and pediatric patients treated with these agents for worsening depression or the emergence of suicidality. The drugs that are the focus of this new Warning are: Prozac (fluoxetine); Zoloft (sertraline); Paxil (paroxetine); Luvox (fluvoxamine); Celexa (citalopram); Lexapro (escitalopram); Wellbutrin (bupropion); Effexor (venlafaxine); Serzone (nefazodone); and Remeron (mirtazapine).
In memory of a beautiful lady and her family who lived in my town. [Zoloft Homicides +suicide]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k0Gq_yrZ_k
Hi again RosieC,
Your previous post as do many similar postings that I read just leaves me with far more questions than answers.
Several immediate questions that strike me are why was she prescribed Zoloft and by whom and why wasn’t she monitored carefully and was there a familial history of mood disorder or post partum depression to name but a few? Did you know this woman personally?
Then again here’s another person’s take on the issue.
http://www.emersonhouston.org/who/2007Sermons/yourBurdens.html
To which I’ll also add my spouse was prescribed Zoloft. She didn’t murder anyone. In fact it was one of the few anti-depressants which benefited her mood state and showed promise for her. Joyce had to discontinue the drug because of a serious side-effect that she encountered; diarrhea. I’ll also point out she quickly withdrew from the medication as well as other anti-depressants also without incidence.
Now how about listing the statistics for all those taking Zoloft or any other anti-depressant that hasn’t committed homicide?
The point being we’ll never really know the answer to this and other tragedies with or without the use of anti-depressants but as I stated initially I’m still left with far more questions that remain unanswered.
Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com
Here are two cases where the defendant in a criminal trial was found not guilty by reason of Zoloft induced insanity. The first was in California and the second took place in Australia.
http://www.ssristories.com/show.php?item=508
The second paragraph reads: “Jurors on Thursday found a Southern California man innocent of attempted murder and assault after a prominent neuropsychiatrist testified that he struck his friend in the head four times with a pronged brass knuckles-type weapon because of an adverse reaction to Zoloft, a popular antidepressant.”
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2004/April/24/local/stories/05local.htm
April 24, 2004
Man found innocent of attempted murder
By CATHY REDFERN
Sentinel STAFF WRITER
——————————————————————————————————————————————–
http://www.ssristories.com/show.php?item=1921
http://abc.net.au/news/regionals/riverina/regriv-24may2001-3.htm
Court finds drug made man kill wife
A New South Wales Supreme Court judge has found an elderly man would not have killed his wife if he had not taken an overdose of the anti-depressant, Zoloft.
Justice Barry O’Keefe says the case is a tragic reminder of the possible, even dangerous, detrimental side-effects of the drug.
David Hawkins, 76, of the southern New South Wales’ town of Tumbarumba, strangled his wife of 50 years in August 1999, after a night in which he took five times the recommended dose of Zoloft.
He gave himself up to police almost immediately and was found by
psychiatrists to have been in a drug induced toxic delirium at the time, suffering hallucinations and psychosis
to the original blog post: your entire blog is full of sensational stories, i guess self-deprecation is cool, but i wouldn’t know how to …nevermind. Maybe how or why you are using these stories and this blog is worth something. You seem –appearances…hamlet…whatever– to have a very strong pro-drug agenda. Pro drug for psychiatry. That is–as in–not for –separate from –medicine. I realize I’m making the medicine/psychiatry distinction. You, no doubt, wish to eliminate this distinction through what you call “destigmatization”. Something like: destigmatize mental illness (as you call it) so the mentally ill can get the help, help in the form of drugs, they need. In other words you (seem to) wish to make mental illness a medical problem. As you (seem to) want to make crime a mental health problem. You do not seem to want to destigmatize mental illness to, say, do something “crazy” like, i don’t know, improve the conditions of psychiatric hospitals and prisions or protect and ensure the rights of mental health patients and prisoners. You do, however, seem to have no problem exploiting the poor condition of prisons and the vulnerable position of prisoners AND suspects to further your agendas.
Another thing I find troubling is your criticism of therapy and psychoanalysis, which seem to reveal (with exceptions, of course) the relative subjective nature of psychiatry. Like everyone is a little crazy, that you in fact have to be crazy in order to function in a constructed society, etc.
There Appears to be a “unholy” alliance of sorts between anti psychiatry dogmatists (as Herb refers to them) and Pro-drug biological psychiatry people: they both use demagoguery to ridicule psychoanalysis. The biological psychiatry people seem to do this, as you do Liz, to conflate psychiatry and medicine in order to further pro-drug policies and agendas.
I’m going to stop now. I don’t know what I’m talking about really. Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe is an okay movie. Not nearly as good as It happened One Night, but the connection to this discussion is less readily apparent. I would like to say other things but I want to avoid attributing personal motives to people’s “positions” (looking at you Herb). This is out of fear not because these things are not relevant.
Coldly,
Your Mama
Hi j.z. laing,
I’ll clarify a point for you that might be confusing to you.
I advocate for pro-choice.
I’m for any treatment option the individual considers beneficial for oneself (that also includes talk and holistic therapies).
I’m opposed to those seeking to ban treatments such as ECT and thereby abrogating the right of a reasonably informed individual to make an un-coerced medical decision in collaboration with one’s attending physician for any treatment that has exhibited potential benefits.
Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com
cho did have social anxiety « Raw and on Paper Says:
[...] of him after the shootings. I’m sure he had other issues but when I look over some of his medical docs, it comes back to social anxiety. (I just read what Spikol posted in her blog. I’m sure there [...]
My dad did a lot of reasearch on Lithium, tricylics, MAOIs, and SSRIs. He really was pleased with the SSRIS, as they usually do *not* have all the serious risks and side effects of MAOIs.
Plus, anytime a depressed person takes an anti-depresant, there is a period where the person is getting more energetic, but their mood had not yet caught up with their energy level. That is when most suicides occur. That is the case with *every* anti-depressant.
And RosieC, cherry picking news stories about court cases where SSRIs have been alleged to play a role still doesn’t prove that SSRIs are more dangerous than other anti-depressants. Nor is it a particularly convincing reason to leave depression and psychosis untreated. And please, tell me, where did you pull your number of 2% of SSRI users commit a violent act? A link or article, please.
Mr. Laing: You don’t seem to have any idea of what you are talking about. No one has *ever* said that psychiatric drugs should be the sole treatment for mental illness. Good lord. I have been, by accident of birth, heavily involved in the psychiatric community my entire life. I promise you, every shrink I have ever met supports concurrent therapy.
K and J Investigations and Case Management » Diagnostic Voices of Community: Falling Through the Cracks Says:
[...] Trouble With Spikol has a post titled “Cho Docs Released” about the release of documents involving the mass shooting and murder at Virginia Tech [...]
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