Jeffrey Lieberman, past-president of the American Psychiatric Association, authored an Op-Ed in last Friday’s New York Times, calling for improved mental health screenings in schools and emergency rooms in the wake of the murder of Virginia journalists Alison Park and Adam Ward. In support of forced treatment mechanisms, Lieberman claims: “Almost every mentally ill perpetrator of mass violence had been symptomatic and untreated for lengthy periods of time before their crime, because they (or their families) did not seek treatment or they refused it.”

However, research on treatment-related-activation, by David Healy and others, has documented numerous cases of mass killings by those currently undergoing psychopharmacological treatment. This research has also examined the possibility of drug-induced violence by those exposed to psychotropic medications shortly prior to the killings and going through drug withdrawal.

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