Teen And Youth Murder And Suicide: The Worst Zoloft Side Effect Of All?

The reports started in 1991, with patients on Zoloft reporting by writing to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) that they were experiencing a Zoloft side effect that they never beofre experienced--before taking the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor), that is. These patients described an increased state (or increasing states) of agitation leading to violent behavior, directed both at the self and outward, at others. But the FDA found after extensively researching the complaints that there was no correlation between the SSRI Zoloft and the reported Zoloft side effect of illegal behavior due to agitation, and the concern was largely thereafter ignored. The Zoloft side effect would not be ignored, however, and more incidents occurred, more defenses included considerations of the drug as the source of the crimes committed, and by 2002, the news was drowning in discussion and report of one case in particular: a 12 year-old boy, Christopher Pittman, who had been so unruly as to run away from home, was intitutionalized in a mental facility and prescribed Zoloft. Moved to his grandparents soon thereafter, Pittman was on one evening (as he reported) beaten by his grandfather and threatened with the intent to send him back to his parents. Pittman shot and killed both grandparents, burned down the home, and took off into the night. Christopher Pittman's attorneys maintain that the Zoloft side effect--induced homicidal tendancies--is the sole cause behind the now 15 year-old's behavior. But despite this child's drug induced state (on a drug that like all drugs do not have to be tested on children before prescribing it to children), despite Pfizer, the manufacturer of the pharmaceutical, listing agitation and agitated behavior as a Zoloft side effect, and despite the numbers of patients treated with Zoloft (and with many of the other SSRI's) having repeatedly complained for some attention to this miserable effect--in patients who had no prior record or history of illegal or violent activity, or even of agitated feelings and behaviors prior to taking Zoloft--the FDA remains adamant, as do many other Zoloft patients who have never experienced the described effects of violence caused by agitation directly or by Zoloft directly or indirectly.

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