This is difficult because of the dramatic crime that took place, and the circumstances surrounding it. Should a person who was impaired and violent because of psych drugs be held responsible for their actions? I am very much in favor of personal responsibility. I am also quite aware of the destructive effects of these "medications". Ultimately, I must be in favor of leniency for this child, although it is something of a hard choice. As reported in the MetroWest News Links at the end of the story are as supplied in the original article.
What is mind-boggling is that it could happen to you. Legally.
The story I got to hear firsthand two years ago and heard again from a cellular phone interview as I prepared to write this is the plight of an over-medicated boy who killed both his grandparents and set their home on fire.
I’m talking about Christopher Pittman, the now 17-year-old who has passed his GED and will have a chance at a new trial on the first week of October in the South Carolina Supreme Court.
His father’s birthday is Oct. 1, and, he says, "That would be the best present!"
If justice is served, Christopher will be freed and get a chance at a life he certainly deserves, but for now he is still serving a prison term of 30 years. He was only 12, but was tried as an adult and has been in jail for the last five years.
As the story goes, Joe Pittman and his wife were having marital problems. Christopher’s mom had come back home, suddenly deciding to leave again. That decision was too great for the boy to bear and his depression was obvious.
Pittman, the father, recalls a time of troubles and the day they called the cops who took his son to a place called Life Stream, in Florida, where teenagers could get support and he was prescribed the drug named Paxil. After three days his behavior was very strange, and Joe recalls asking the doctor if the medication could have been the problem.
"I was raised this way, you asked the doctor and you could trust him," Pittman said in a phone interview. "My family always went to Dr. Butcher -- he was awesome! We were raised to trust the doctor. I asked Dr. Smith about side effects and he didn’t say anything. After three days Christopher was getting worse, not better, but it never crossed my mind that it was the Paxil."
Things were so difficult for Christopher at the time that the people of Life Stream didn’t want to release him to his father. That was when the grandparents, both retired, decided to come in and take him to spend time with them. And back in South Carolina, they lovingly entrusted his health care to the doctor they knew.
"The doctor switched him off from Paxil to Zoloft like ’bam’ and that made things a lot worse," Pittman recalls. Being an anti-depressant, Zoloft is a medication that belongs in the category of selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. With these meds, the chemistry of the brain is changed, and while some people may be helped, at least temporarily by the change, many others suffer tremendously from the chemical imbalances.
Details are sketchy after this long time and the publicity of the case, but Pittman says he believes his son was given more than 200 mg of Zoloft each day. Christopher weighed only 78 pounds.
"Christopher said that my mom increased the medication from what it was supposed to be the amount written on the bottle, because the doctor told her to do it," Pittman said.
I know that doctors often do that. The dosages my husband and I have given to our daughter over the years have often been different from what the prescription says on the bottles because doctors react to reported changes of behavior. Unfortunately, also in our case, the children can be in awful shape when the parents start to question the dosages.
In Christopher’s case, the increase must have been so extraordinary that his brain couldn’t bear the changes.
He had an episode of aggression that caused his grandparents to punish him. And shortly thereafter, he used a family gun he had learned to use, killed his grandparents and set their house on fire.
While this is startling and certainly tragic, it is not seen as a crime he committed even by his close relatives.
"We are a tight family," Pittman said.
Those of us who have seen up close how the SSRIs can change people’s behaviors do understand that the drug companies are at fault because he couldn’t have controlled the overdose of the chemicals given to him.
"Christopher said: ’It’s like you’re watching your favorite TV show. I couldn’t not do it,’" his father recalled. It’s also the case that after these horrible actions, these children often do not recall what they have done.
Like Christopher, thousands of other children are still prescribed these mind-altering drugs. Like in his case, the consequences can be devastating. Because of efforts from the International Coalition for Drug Awareness (www.drugawareness.org), new regulations are in place to educate parents and guardians about the effects of these dangerous drugs.
There is a lot of work to do but, for now, we need to unite to help Christopher’s new chance at the South Carolina Supreme Court.
To learn how you can help, log on to www.justiceseekers.com where you can also learn a lot about SSRIs and their effects.
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