We don't yet know if Robin Westman, the Minneapolis Annunciation Church mass shooting suspect, was on psych drugs. But we do know mass shooters in the U.S. tend to be young, obsessive, male loners and many have been prescribed psychoactive drugs.

For example, Eric Harris, one of the two shooters at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado in 1999 which ushered in the current spate of mass shootings, was on the psychotropic drug Luvox. Prescribing information for the antidepressant says, Close supervision of patients and in particular those at high risk should accompany drug therapy.

Jeff Weise who fatally shot his grandfather, his grandfather's girlfriend and seven people at the Red Lake Senior High School in 2005, was on the well-known antidepressant Prozac.

Two years later Cho Seung-Hui, who perpetrated the Virginia Tech murders, was also on psychoactive antidepressants.

"We urgently need a national debate about guns. But we also urgently need a national debate about the epidemic of mood-altering drugs being prescribed to young Americans," wrote Arianna Huffington in 2007 after the Virginia Tech mass shooting in which 32 perished.*

*Huffington is right. Westman's three weapons were purchased lawfully, highlighting the need for better background checks and "red flag" laws that alert authorities to dangerous gun owners' mental states but gun show loopholes, trafficking and assault weapons are also factors. For their part, gun advocates decry gun-free zones--the absence of "good guys with a gun" at violence sites--and the romanticization of mass shootings in video games and movies.

After the Virginia Tech murders, in 2008, another university was targeted. Steven Kazmierczak fatally shot seven at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. He had also been prescribed Prozac which he had recently stopped.

The BBC Looks at Batman Shootings

Few can forget the Batman shootings at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater in 2012. James Holmes, the gunman who fatally shot 12 and wounded scores, was on antidepressants. The links appeared so strong, the BBC created an in-depth report entitled The Batman Killer - a Prescription For Murder? in 2017.

"Why else would a clever, shy guy with no history of violence, from a loving home, carry out such a heinous attack? except the effect of the psychoactive drugs wrote the BBCs Shelley Jofre Holmes in the report. He had no enemies, no terrorist ideology to drive him on.

Dr. David Healy, a psychiatrist and psycho-pharmacologist who has written books about the risks of antidepressants studied Holme's case and interviewed him in prison. These killings would never have happened had it not been for the medication James Holmes had been prescribed, he concluded.

Other Drug-Associated Mass Shootings

Dylann Roof, the racist murderer of nine parishioners at Charlestons Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015, was also on antidepressants according to documents unsealed by U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel.

In 2013, Aaron Alexis fatally shot 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard in southeast Washington, D.C. where he had a security clearance. Less than a month before the killings, Alexis was prescribed the antidepressant trazodone.

The following year, 2014, Army Specialist Ivan Lopez, fatally shot four people on the Fort Hood military base near Killeen, Texas after a highly publicized Fort Hood shooting in 2009. According to the Washington Post, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the commander of Fort Hood, said Lopez had behavioral health and mental health issues and was taking antidepressants.

The links between mass shootings and psych drugs have been cited before. Four days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, Geoffrey Ingersol of Business Insider wrote that the psychoactive drugs "the FDA pumped out [had] an ability to exact the opposite desired effect on people: that is, you know, inducing rather than inhibiting psychosis and aggressive behavior."

Conclusion

Few studies attribute gender dysphoria and a trans identity itself to SSRIs and other psych drugs but, significantly, few transitioning people are not on the drugs during their treatments--raising significant chicken and egg questions. It is known, however, that SSRIs contribute to the current epidemic of bipolar diagnoses causing an additional drug stew. What drugs was Westman on?

Like so many mass shooters, Westman took his own life--denying the public and victims a chance for justice and even an understanding of the source of his hateful acts. Though there are no answers, few doubt another mass shooting is around the corner.