Minnesota- The 16-year-old Minnesota outsider who killed nine people before taking his own life was being treated with the controversial anti-depressant Prozac.
The revelation yesterday by Jeff Weise’s aunts, Shauna and Tammy Luscher, on CBS News’ “The Early Show” revived the debate over whether such drugs induce homicidal and suicidal thoughts in children and teens.
Eric Harris, one of the teen gunmen in the infamous Columbine massacre in 1999, had been prescribed Prozac, as had Kip Kinkel, who killed his parents and classmates at Thurston High School in Oregon in 1998.
Weise killed his grandfather and the man’s girlfriend before murdering five students, a teacher and a security guard at Red Lake High School on Monday.
Prozac, Luvox and similar antidepressants belong to a class called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.
Dr. David Shaffer, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Columbia University, said the drugs alone cannot be blamed for the tragedies.
“The kids who get involved in these terrible disasters are quite sick, and whether or not the SSRI is going to help them is an open question,” Shaffer said.
Activist Vera Sharav, head of the New York-based nonprofit Alliance for Human Research Protection, noted that SSRIs carry warnings to watch for suicidal or aggressive behaviors in children.
“We have got to look at the possibility that the drugs would not be the only cause, but if they are a match that ignites [aggression], that would be a real important safety issue,” said Sharav.
She contends that SSRI drugs take away “the inhibition that we naturally have. We’d like to wring someone’s neck, but we don’t do it.”
Meanwhile, more evidence emerged showing Weise had been planning the massacre.
TheSmokingGun.com reported Weise posted a computer animation on a Web site in October that shows a person shooting four people.
The 30-second animation is titled “Target Practice” and depicts a person using an automatic rifle to shoot two people in the head, a third in the chest, blowing up a squad car with a grenade, and then shooting a Ku Klux Klan member.
The animated shooter then puts the barrel of a handgun in his mouth and pulls the trigger.