Coming Oct. 5: ‘Antidepressants and Homicide: Automatism Spectrum Disorders’

By Mad in America

Mad in America will present a panel discussion, “Antidepressants and Homicide: Automatism Spectrum Disorders” on Saturday, Oct. 5 at 1 p.m. EDT, 10 a.m. PDT.

Dr. David Healy and panelists Jim Gottstein and Christopher Lane, Ph.D., will discuss the overwhelming evidence from clinical studies and tragic events that antidepressants can lead people to commit homicide.

Judges and prosecutors both acknowledge this to be true. However, no jury has ever acquitted a person for homicide on the basis of a drug they took. If the person shows any hint of intent, we convict them — not the drug.

The only hope of acquittal is if there is evidence that the killing happened in an “automatic state,” like sleepwalking.

Yet, most of our behaviors are in fact automatic (reflexive and unconscious). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) reshape the sensory inputs that drive these reflexes, with relatively immediate effects on our personality and potentially our character. Doesn’t that make a case for acquittal?

This webinar will explore the effect SSRIs can have and whether we, as a society and in the court of law, can draw a line between whether a person is “present” — or not “present” — at the time a crime is committed.

The panel also will explore cultural, political and legal factors that block acquittals.

Tickets cost $10. Funds will support Mad in America’s work as a nonprofit organization. We understand that not everyone can afford the expense at this time. Please type in the code homicide for a free ticket as needed.

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Ask a question: If you’d like to submit a question for the panel, please email it to zcunniffe@madinamerica.com at least 48 hours before the start of the event. We will review all questions and choose those most relevant to the audience and topic. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions during the discussion. Thank you!

About the panelists

Dr. David Healy has worked on serotonin reuptake systems for 40 years: in the laboratory, as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies, as a clinician using SSRIs and recognizing the problems they cause, and for over a decade as a member of the RxISK.org team that collects reports on treatment-induced adverse reactions.

This has put him in a good position to outline what was known about these drugs from the start, what was learned about their hazards and when, and in particular how companies have managed the problem that stopping these drugs posed for them — hazards known about before the drugs were marketed.

Jim Gottstein is an Alaskan lawyer and author of “The Zyprexa Papers” (2021) which shows how Eli Lilly was illegally promoting the use of an antipsychotic drug on children and the elderly, with particularly lethal effects.

In 2002, he founded the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights to mount a strategic litigation campaign against forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights’ mission includes informing the public about the counterproductive and harmful nature of the drugs and electroshock.

In addition, Jim co-founded a number of organizations to help psychiatric patients, all but one of which were peer-run including Mental Health Consumers of Alaska, Alaska Mental Health Consumer Web and Soteria-Alaska.

Christopher Lane, Ph.D., is a member of Northwestern University’s Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities and a regular contributor to Psychology Today, where he writes about psychiatry, psychiatric drugs and all kinds of side effects. His books include “Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness” (Yale, 2007), translated into six languages, on behind-the-scenes changes to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the creation of the anxiety disorders between the 1970s and 1990s.

About the host

Robert Whitaker is the author of four books, and co-author of a fifth, three of which tell of the history of psychiatry. In 2010, his “Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness” won the U.S. Investigative Reporters and Editors Book Award for best investigative journalism.

Whitaker is the founder of madinamerica.com, a website that features research news and blogs by an international group of writers interested in “rethinking psychiatry.”

Originally published by Mad in America on Eventbrite.

Mad in America’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the U.S. (and abroad). We believe that the current drug-based paradigm of care has failed our society and that scientific research, as well as the lived experience of those who have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, calls for profound change.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Children’s Health Defense.

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