AndreusMaximus
Master
Absolutely spot-on.That's because your grandma probably didn't have severe emotional disturbance since she was a child. There's a very big difference between taking antidepressants for conditions that develop during adulthood, and being emotionally disturbed from birth, and antidepressants being used to cover up your symptoms because your parents are in denial and trying to make you appear normal.
Antidepressants being prescribed to children, to cover-up deep emotional disturbance, so they can fake enough impulse control to get by and graduate, absolutely plays a role in why school shootings happen. It is not a coincidence A/Ds were approved in 1988, and school shootings started a year after.
The kid is able to fake it until they get in their 20s, when Mom and Dad can't make them take the pills anymore. Then, when they withdraw from the drugs suddenly, they experience an emotional crash just like the drug warnings say they will. Their real problem was not fixed by the antidepressants, just covered up. Now they're in their 20s, they stop taking the drugs, fall off the cliff, and go postal. Their real problem was never addressed, because it was easier for Mom and Dad to save face by giving their kid pills and avoiding the diagnosis. The drive-through line at CVS doesn't have a stigma attached to it.
Incidentally, firearms absolutely do play a role in mass shootings. If there were no firearms, there would be no shootings. No contrary argument is possible. But that doesn't mean we want to ban them.
When something contributes to something bad, we have to have the courage to accept it and point it out. AR-15s were on the market since 1965, over half a century, and weren't involved in a school shooting the first 20 years they were legal.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Antidepressants. School shootings turned-on like flipping a switch as soon as they started being mass-prescribed. Just like guns, they are a tool that can be used intelligently, or stupidly. They can be an "easy way out," and parents who don't get their violent child real help are potentially creating the next monster.