A 26-year-old was arrested for allegedly attempting to murder U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Dallas Morning News reports that during his 10-minute initial court appearance, the defendant, stated that he was on “medication”, but he didn’t say which medication he was on or why.
This comes on the heels of the Robb Elementary School tragedy in Uvalde, Texas where an 18-year-old killed 19 students and two teachers. While the gunman’s mother and the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety say he had no psychiatric history, a “fact-free” public policy debate has begun while key information remains unexamined. Toxicology results have not been returned. A toxicology report is sorely needed in all cases of mass violence.
It is time to question what could have triggered the mindset of the alleged killer, an issue that needs responding to if we are to truly face preventing more tragedies and provide grieving families and the nation with answers.
Mainstream media quotes experts saying that such individuals are “mentally disturbed,” or have “untreated mental illness,” but that doesn’t explain the level of violence we are seeing.
A review of scientific literature published in Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry regarding the “astonishing rate” of mental illness over the past 50 years revealed that it’s not “mental illness” linked to increased acts of violence, but the psychiatric drugs prescribed to treat it.
Mandatory toxicology tests should be required in each deadly incident to determine any prescription or illicit drug use, especially as today, many psychotropic drugs can be purchased from rogue online pharmacies. Prescription stimulants have become drugs of abuse.
As policymakers forward mental health care as a “solution” to mass violence, they miss the point that many of the perpetrators have been under psychiatric care, the mainstay of which is mind-altering psychotropic drugs. Proponents of such drugging state that not all cases of mass violence are correlated to psychiatric drugs, but that’s just the point. It’s often neither confirmed nor denied, as law enforcement isn’t required to investigate and publicly report on the use of these drugs in cases of mass violence.
Growing numbers of families are also concerned about behavioral or mental health programs in schools and other settings, and whether these are adversely influencing the minds of their children. A broader discussion of these issues can be found in a publication from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International: www.cchrint.org/pdfs/violence-report.pdf.