Polícia Civil do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro Civil Police) need to check the shooter’s medicine cabinet

Twenty-three-year-old Wellington de Oliveira, a former student of the Tasso da Silveira primary school, in the town of Realengo, was at his former school earlier today on the apparent pretense of delivering a talk to a class when he opened fire on them mid-speech, killing 11 children and wounding 13 others.

If you ‘ve been following this story, you may have seen the news item in which one survivor/bystander remarked “Are we in the United States?”

As we have learned in the U.S. (as well as Finland and elsewhere), the people who commit these kinds of school murders and other mass shootings are often on a psychiatric drug or withdrawing from it–either condition has been known to make a person psychotic.

Some facts:

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned that antidepressants can cause suicidal ideation, mania and psychosis.

• The manufacturer of one antidepressant, Effexor, has even warned that the drug can cause homicidal ideation.

• In October 2006, a study came out in the Public Library of Science-Medicine journal, conducted by Dr. David Healy, director of Cardiff University’s North Wales department of psychological medicine, which found that the antidepressant Paxil raises the risk of violence.  Though the study focuses specifically on Paxil, Healy reasoned that other antidepressant drugs like Prozac, Celexa and Zoloft, most likely pose the same risk of violence.  “We’ve got good evidence that the drugs can make people violent and you’d have to reason from that that there may be more episodes of violence,” Healy said.

Other commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs carry similar warnings and side effects.  These drugs include:

• antipsychotics such as Seroquel and Risperdal, which can cause hostility, violence and suicidal thoughts);

• tranquilizers such as Xanax and Ambien, which can cause aggressive behavior, hostility, psychosis and rage and

• stimulants such as Ritalin and Concerta, known to cause aggression, mental/mood changes, psychosis and violent behavior.

Since 2004, antidepressants in the same class as Paxil, Prozac, etc. (known as SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) have carried an FDA “black box” warning—the agency’s strongest—stating that the drugs can cause suicidal thoughts and actions in children and teenagers.  The FDA later broadened the warning of a potential increased risk of suicidal behavior to include adults.  The warning calls for the monitoring of patients on antidepressants, especially when the dosage has been changed.

Additionally, eleven of the last “school shooters” were either taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs when they opened fire, resulting in 54 dead and 105 wounded.

These drugs have been linked to many, many other such mass murders and senseless acts of violence.

Hundreds of such cases dating back to the 1980s can be found on the web site “SSRI Stories” (www.ssristories.com/index.php).

President Dilma Rousseff, Governor Sergio Cabral, Minister of Education Fernando Haddad, Rio Police and others need to mount a concerted and coordinated effort to find out what drug an/or what kind of psychiatric treatment de Oliveira was on.

They need to ensure that full-range toxicology testing is done which detects not only alcohol and street drugs, but any prescription substance.

They then need to make the results known to a grieving public.

Mental health counselor Mary D. Hein charged with sexual exploitation of client, asking him to kill her husband

In October 2010, Wisconsin mental health counselor Mary D. Hein (a.k.a. Mary D. Duncan, who is listed by the Wisconsin Department of Regulation and Licensing as holding a professional counselor training license), was charged with three counts of sexual exploitation by a psychotherapist, one count of solicitation of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of obstructing an officer.

Specifically, she is accused of having sex with one of her clients and then asking him to kill her husband.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Hein, the client reported that Hein drugged him and had sex with him at his home in November 2009 and again in January and February 2010, during which time she requested he kill her husband.

The client, who had no intention of killing the husband, reported it to police.

Source: “Mary Hein charged with sexual exploitation,” WISN.com, October 12, 2010.

Psychiatrist, twice convicted of murder, loses appeal

In 2004, Australian psychiatrist Jean Eric Gassy was convicted of the October 2002 murder of Margaret Tobin , who he shot four times as she exited an elevator on her way back to her office.  He fled the scene, but was later tracked to Sydney and extradited to face the murder charge.

Tobin, who was at that time the Chief of South Australia’s mental health services, had been Gassy’s supervisor at Sydney’s St. George Hospital when she made a complaint about his behaviour.  That complaint eventually led to Gassy losing his license to practice medicine in 1997.

It had been reported that Gassy took a sick leave from St. George in 1994 for psychiatric reasons.  Tobin requested an investigation by the New South Wales Medical Board.  The Board in turn requested Gassy have a psychiatric assessment.  He refused and subsequently lost his job.

Prosecutor’s alleged that Gassy killed Tobin out of resentment.

The original 2004 guilty verdict was overturned by the High Court which raised concerns about instructions given to the jury.  But a May 2009 retrial ended in the same murder conviction for Gassy.

The South Australian Court of Criminal Appeal today rejected Gassy’s attempt to appeal the May 2009 conviction.  Gassy had argued that evidence of him suffering from a delusions should not have been admitted during his second trial.  But in refusing the appeal, the court opined that all of the evidence that Gassy suffered from delusional beliefs was relevant to the case against him and that evidence of this nature was a matter for the jury to assess.

Gassy continues to serve a life sentence over Dr Tobin’s murder with a non-parole period of 30 years.

He represented himself during his second trial and the subsequent appeal.

Psychologist jailed for husband’s murder in ’04 now in solitary on suspicion of plotting prison break

Convicted murderer Michelle Theer has been placed in an isolation cell while officials investigate whether she was plotting a prison break.

Theer, a former Fayetteville psychologist, has been in prison since December 2004, when she and her lover, former Army Staff Sgt. John Diamond, were convicted of murdering Theer’s husband.

Theer has been held in a single cell since April, when prison officials discovered that she tried to mail a map of the prison and other documents to someone on the outside, said Annie Harvey, warden of the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh.

“We take anything that could cause someone to escape very seriously,” Harvey said. “The best defense is to take everything seriously on the front end.”

Harvey declined to provide details about the map or the other documents that she said Theer appears to have been trying to mail.

She said prison officials regularly screen inmate mail that appears suspicious. The smell or size of a package could trigger a closer examination, Harvey said.

She said Theer, who is 41, initially was placed in administrative segregation. Her status was changed to disciplinary segregation when prison officials determined that enough evidence exists to investigate her case further.

Theer has pleaded not guilty, Harvey said.

If Theer is found to have been plotting an escape, Harvey said, the punishment would likely be maximum-custody confinement and a loss of privileges.

Theer’s husband, Air Force Capt. Marty Theer, was shot to death in December 2000 on a stairway outside Michelle Theer’s second-floor office on Raeford Road.

Prosecutors said Theer lured her husband to the stairwell so Diamond could ambush him.

Diamond was sentenced to life in prison in a military trial in 2001.

Michelle Theer was indicted in May 2002 and went on the run. She hid in south Florida, where she had plastic surgery done to her face, lived under an assumed name and planned to change her identity several times to start a new life. U.S. marshals apprehended her in August 2002.

Source: Greg Barnes, “Michelle Theer in isolation, officials probe possible prison break,” Fayetteville Observer, May 18, 2010.