Sorry I've been away from this thread quite long, duty calls, as usual...
fable wrote:Mind you, C Elegans (if she can tear herself away from Silur and Baby for a moment) is probably going to blow all this information out of the water with incredible detail.
Alas, it's not Silur and the baby who keeps me away from GB, it's my job as usual. Silur and the baby entertain each other very well, actually.
I won't go into incredible detail since the topic is enough to fathom a number of PhD theses, but I'll try to clarify a little bit what is known about SSRI and aggression/violence.
Thanks Moleman and Kipi for the additional information. What you write about Auvinen's background @Moleman is quite interesting, especially that his friends report he had withdrawn society lately. Withdrawal is a marker of a lot of bad things, most prominently psychosis or other form of outburst of disorder. It is not know why, but psychiatric research shows that a period of withdrawal is associated with subsequent outbursts. Severe psychosis disorders like schizophrenia are characterized by a period of withdrawal and even social isolation, before the first disease episode. But as I said, also other forms of outbursts, like suicide, aggression/violent outbursts or other impulses, can follow after a withdrawal period. It's impossible to predict what will happen with a specific individual, but in general, something bad will happen.
Swedish media have reported that Auvinen expressed sympathies with Pentti Linkola's worldview, that's what I referred to as "eco-fascistic narcissism" above. I didn't know Auvinen's mother was a Linkola follower, though.
Regarding Auvinen's medication, all of those mentioned in the article Kipi linked to are anti-depressants of SSRI type. SSRI means selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and without going into receptor pharmacology and synapsology, the effect of all these medication is to increase the concentraion of serotonin in the brain. The serotonin system however, is a very large and complex system that is involved in regulation of a variety of important physical and psychological functions. SSRI:s are anti depressants, but apart from basic mood, other functions such as emotions, sexuality, sleep and eating behaviour may be affected. A well known side effect of SSRI treatment is that in some patients, impulse inhibition decreases and anxiety increases during the first weeks of treatment. After a while, the nervous system "adjusts" to the new level of serotonin and these undesired effects disappear. These side effects however, are related to the much debated topic of whether SSRI:s are unsuitable for some patients, and especially young people. Although suicides due to depression clearly are decreased by SSRI treatment, there are clinical reports of increases in
thoughts about suicide and
feelings of wishing to commit suicide. This is especially true for younger patients. It is not know exactly why, but probably the increased activity in the serotonin system leads to more intense emotions for a period of time.
Without knowing the exact details about Auvinen's medication intervalls, dosage, time or putative side effects it is of course impossible to say whether these medications played any role at all in his behaviour. Even though Auvinen himself felt he became more aggressive by his medicines, there is no way of knowing if this might have been true or not without studying his medical records thoroughly. What we do know however, is that he must have been diagnosed with depression, since SSRI:s are used almost exclusively for this indication in Scandinavia.
