Father Kills Family and Self on Father's Day. Another victim of anti-depressants?

Firstly, Happy belated Fathers day to all.

This is one of those terribly sad stories. If you read read the basic background, you get the sense that this was some normal Joe until he experienced a head injury and started medication. Killed his wife, two children, then self, on Father's Day.

The one positive from the story is how the neighbors reacted, which is a real example of citizenship and community. A former marine and a nurse from the same family entered the home before the police arrived and tried in vain to save the 2 year old.

The title of the article is "The Father's Killing of Family a Mystery". I think the 3rd to last paragraph may have solved it:

In a post from July 2012 about an ongoing problem with double vision, which apparently developed after he was hit in the head some weeks earlier, Jernigan complained that the medication he was taking may cause mood changes, sadness and suicidal thoughts.

Truly sad. Link to article:
Times Dispatch: Father's Killing of Family a Mystery

a reply to: Arktos1

Well you already explained this one with the side effects of his medication and maybe the head injury itself.

This is a very sad story. However, trying to understand mental illness is a real mine field. The mind is a truly unfathomable place and sometimes things just don't work out.

What drove this man to do what he did will doubtless haunt relatives and friends for some time.

Family killings followed by suicides are very rare, but not unheard of.

Try posting happy story next time.
Regards

a reply to: Arktos1

Oh...

Well that is utterly tragic. The end of the article says that a fund has been started for the funerals of the wife and the children in this instance, and that is laudable. But if he was induced to these acts by uncontrollable psychological torment, then is the father not a victim as well? Should he not be buried with his wife and children, if he was not legally responsible for his actions at the time?

I recognise how appalling this situation is, but unless he murdered his family in cold blood, I think he ought to be treated as one of the victims, and included in the thoughts and prayers of all of those who are offering up their time and money for a burial fund.

a reply to: paraphi

Thanks for your reply.

The intention of the post was not to sensationalize the sad event, but to point out that there is another killing/suicidal event where medications were being used as a treatment of symptoms.

Trying to understand mental illness is less a minefield than understanding how to treat it, which has been, and is still quite impossible.

SSRI's stimulate chemical changes, and may help in some cases, but are in no way a cure. I cannot help but feel that many of these outcomes would have been avoided if medication was not a part of their therapy.

If you want to read happier stories, I will make an assumption that you will not find many of those in a medical conspiracy forum.

a reply to: Arktos1
The "happy post" is because this is just another depressing story, albeit an important subject, so don't think for a minute I would treat it light-heartedly.

I guess the point would be whether medications delayed or tempered the actions of this person, or exacerbated them.

Mental illness is a real problem area. Many of the drugs are very powerful and working with the mind is complex and difficult. We may never know whether the drugs in question exacerbated the symptoms and pushed the person towards these acts, or (as is more likely), whether the drugs tempered or delayed the actions; or had no impact whatsoever. Furthermore, we don't know the circumstances of this tragedy, for example whether what the medical opinion was as to access to his family etc., or whether there were identified risks of this event happening.

The best thing to do would be to get hold of the inquest documents, which should be public. This may unravel some of these questions. However, blindly blaming the medication (or not) would be to simplify the whole tragedy to a level that would be silly and trivialise the subject of mental illness.

Regards

No biggie!
When...or if the pharmaceutical company that made these deadly cocktails is found...in the wrong, they just pay a couple of million.
Then giggle about the billions they made over all of their losses.
I can't wait until REAL medicine is legalized across the US.
Until then, murderers will get away with murder, and a healthy profit too!

a reply to: Arktos1

It may be the case that the medication caused him to lose it or it could be he was having issues prior and the injury+meds just exacerbated the issue.

Men have historically been quite violent toward women in the United States and it's not uncommon to hear of homocides carried out by male intimate partners(especially ones also filling the father/parental role).

I haven't looked at previous data to see if murders involving men and their families has gone up but if it is in line with the overall homicide and murder rates in general I would reckon it's been decreasing over the last 20 years.

I do think that a lot of these medications act the same way as alcohol does with long term abuse. I think they do have the ability to cause people to act in a suicidal fashion and increase aggression.

It might be something where this man was already having issues with aggression and then the head injury and medication added to it. Or it could be a case of the medication causing it. So much of the data surrounding these medications is suppressed. I don't know why anyone takes them.

Stick to the older stuff that isn't patented by any one company and has multiple studies done on them.

a reply to: Arktos1

similar thing happened here in Australia some years back
guy drives himself and his kids into a lake
(guy survives)

i'd blame anti-depressants on any other day, but this was fathers day (iirc, or his birthday)

that's calculated and not to be blamed on "meds"

personal responsibility.

a reply to: Arktos1

The head injury is actually what jumps out to me. I suffered a head injury a couple years ago that produced double vision among other visual disturbances including visual snow and prolonged after images (palinopsia). Basically my vision became so cluttered that even a blank white wall was filled with "junk". To put it quite simply, my visual processing was going into overdrive. I cannot even describe how distressing it is to constantly have your vision be completely messed. It's terrifying and no matter where you look, the beautiful world you once saw is gone. It had a profound effect on me to the extent that I became persistently depersonalized.

Thankfully for me, a lot of the symptoms died down and I can see the pretty world again for the most part. To say that there weren't days where the distress and stress of my visual disturbances didn't threaten my sanity would be lying. It didn't help that, though my eyes often looked unfocused and I adopted aversion strategies, people couldn't see what I was seeing. I got brushed off so much because people couldn't see through my eyes. They couldn't "see" the problem. If I was built any different, I would've gone mad. Instead, I just turned into a depersonalized robot. I was able to see pretty clearly for the first time about a month or so ago. I was so happy that I was sobbing for joy in the middle of my driveway. It was that bad before.

Anyways, just thought I'd chime in with my experience with what Jernigan was likely experiencing just from the visual disruptions alone. It really, really sucks. Can't emphasize it enough.