Right-wing figures suggest a link to antidepressants after a number of mass shootings.
Several mass shooters are said to have taken the SSRIs, suggesting they are to blame.
The claims are a political ploy.
Several right-wing figures suggested that antidepressants could be to blame for the mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade.
When will we have an honest discussion about drug abuse, mental illness, and the use of drugs? There are deadly side effects of a type of antidepressants.
She said it was time to stop blaming the gun and have honest conversations about the real causes of mass shooting.
Tucker Carlson said on his show that there was a correlation between the two.
A lot of young men are acting crazy. Is it surprising? He said that a large number of them have been prescribed psychotropic drugs by their doctors.
There isn't much evidence to suggest that the medications increase icidal tendencies.
David Rettew is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and medical director of Lane County Behavioral Health in Eugene.
Depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders can be treated with the use of theSSRIs. The reuptake process is blocked by them.
SSRIs are the most popular antidepressants as they are relatively safe and cause less side effects than similar drugs.
Insomnia, headaches, nausea, and reduced sexual desire are some of the possible side effects of the drug, according to the website.
There is a complicated question of whether antidepressants cause an increase in violent tendencies.
According to the FDA, anti-depressants have been linked to higher rates of suicide among young people, but experts say there is no evidence to suggest they increase violence.
"On an individual basis, I never say never when it comes to a medication reaction because people can have some extreme sensitivities."
People have been studying antidepressants in various systematic, randomized, double-blind controlled ways, and homicidal shootings just don't show up as a side-effect in these trials.
When Insider asked if there was evidence of her claims about violence and the use of drugs, her spokesman pointed to a page on the internet about school shooting victims who took drugs.
On his Fox News show on Tuesday, Tucker Carlson named several mass shooters who he claimed were taking drugs such as Zoloft and Prozac.
Experts note that correlation doesn't mean causation. It doesn't mean that the shooters were driven to violence by their mental health issues if they were taking antidepressants.
The underlying condition that the medications are being used for is driving the behavior and that the antidepressants just don't work as much as we would like them to for a lot of people.
When Insider reached out to a Fox News spokesman for clarification on Carlson's claims, they shared several links, including articles about mass shooters who took antidepressants.
Many mass shooters did not have a history of taking mental health care.
According to an investigation by Voice of America, only 23% of mass shooters took mental health care.
Two-thirds of mass shooters had a history of mental health concerns according to a report.
According to a study published in the PLoS Medicine journal in 2015, people under the age of 25 were more likely to commit violent crimes when on a low dose of antidepressants. The risk was reduced when taking a higher dose.
Seena Fazel is one of the study's authors.
It may be that it's actually a lack of treatment and that it could be residual symptoms, because we found a link with subtherapeutic doses of SSRIs.
Carlson claimed that the rise in US mass shootings could be linked to the rise in the number of prescriptions for the drug.
The US is the largest consumer of antidepressants. Canada is next.
The United States has the highest rate of mass shooting in industrialized countries. There have been over 200 mass shootings in the first 141 days of the year.
Despite having a gun-loving population, the country has only had one fatal shooting in the last seven years.
The data shows that industrialized countries with more guns have higher rates of gun crime and deaths.
In the wake of mass shootings in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom gun laws were tightened. The Council of Foreign Relations compared gun violence in those countries.
Democrats and Republicans have different plans to stop mass shootings.
Republicans have largely resisted the push for stronger gun control laws.
Critics say that people with histories of making spurious claims are using antidepressants as a scapegoat to distract from calls to tighten up rules of gun access.
Business Insider has an article on it.
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