Doctors say antidepressants might have pushed Trump murderer over edge

Details are beginning to emerge about the state of mind of Donald Trump‘s would-be assassin after the FBI gained access to his cellphone this week.

Though no concrete motive has been established, Thomas Crooks’ internet history revealed he searched for information about ‘major depressive disorder’ in the days leading up the attack on July 13.

Psychologists say the condition, a clinical term to describe depression that lasts a long time and affects everyday life, is typically marked by hatred of oneself. 

But it can also be turned outward. Depressed people are around three times more likely to carry out a violent crime, some research shows. At least a quarter of mass shooters in the US deal are clinically depressed or have other non-psychotic mental illnesses. 

The prospect that Crooks may have been depressed and taking anti-depressants has reignited a debate in the medical world: do those drugs, in fact, play a role in creating homicidal tendencies? 

Law enforcement do not know why Crooks targeted Trump and the shooter’s politics appear confused.

He was a registered Republican and had been described as classmates as a definite conservative, yet he donated money to a progressive movement in 2021.

Still, even without a motive, doctors have said Crooks fits the standard model of a mass shooter. 

He was believed to have felt disenfranchised and invisible and sought a sort of immortality through his violent actions.

A review of Crooks’ phones and computer by the FBI found he had Googled major depressive disorder. 

However, it was not clear whether he had been diagnosed with the condition, which affects around 17 million adults in the US.

Dr Craig Hands, a clinical psychologist in California, told DailyMail.com: ‘In the case of the shooter, I can only surmise, in many ways, from what I’ve heard, he fits a common profile. 

‘Indeed it may be likely, I don’t know that he was depressed, but that may have contributed to his actions.

‘This depression creates isolation… there is kind of a burning ember kind of depression that’s associated with internal rage against oneself, and rage against the machine as it were. Rage against the world.’

Major depressive disorder is a clinical diagnosis that causes a persistent feeling of deep sadness, hopelessness, loss in interest in activities, low energy, poor or increased appetite, concentration changes, suicidal ideations and behavior. 

Dr Hands added: ‘Typically the depression is criticism and rage towards oneself, self-hatred. 

‘I have to underscore the term hatred, hatred for oneself, but oftentimes, or sometimes, that hatred gets projected out externally.’

A 2015 Oxford University study of about 47,000 people in Sweden both with and without depression found that those with depression were about three times more likely than the general population to commit a violent crime, such as homicide, aggravated assault, or robbery. 

Crooks’ phone showed that in the weeks leading to his attack on Trump, the loner had researched Ethan Crumbley, who shot and killed four classmates at a Michigan high school in 2021.

Crooks also searched Crumbley’s parents, who were both found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the first time parents of a school shooter have been prosecuted. 

Law enforcement said Crooks had photos of both Biden and Trump in his phone and had searched when the Democratic Convention was being held, and where. 

Dr Rachel Toles, a licensed clinical psychologist based in California, who specializes in the study of violent criminals told DailyMail.com that Crooks may have been seeking to kill ‘the most visible’ people on the planet to make up for the fact felt invisible all of his life.

However, an old theory about mass shooters has re-emerged following the new details about Crooks’ phone history.

Professor Peter Gøtzsche, a medical researcher and co-founder of the famous Cochrane Collaboration, an evidence-based research institution in the UK, floated the idea medication could have played a role.

He said that it’s ‘quite possible that he was taking a depression drug, which we know increases the risk of homicide.’

The controversial idea is not totally unheard of. A study from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit watchdog group based in Pennsylvania, drew a link between antidepressants and violent behaviors.

Researchers collated more than 780,000 reports of adverse effects linked to 484 drugs, 1,937 involved violence, including acts like homicide or physical assault. 

They identified 31 drugs (6 percent of the total) that were disproportionately linked to violent events. These included 11 antidepressants such as Prozac, some ADHD medications, and a few sedatives 

Paxil was associated with a 10-time increased odds of causing aggression, while the rest were around eight times as likely. 

A separate study in PLoS medicine found that young people taking antidepressants like Prozac are more likely to commit violent crimes, with a 43 percent increase in risk for 15-24 year-olds. 

Meanwhile, a 2015 Swedish cohort study found a link between SSRIs and violent crime convictions, but the results varied by age group.

A 2016 review of over 70 trials found an increase in aggression and self-harm in children and adolescents taking SSRIs, but not in adults.

Still, other studies have found that antidepressants may have anti-aggressive effects, and it is difficult to separate whether the depression itself causes violence.

Common antidepressants increase the amount of available mood-boosting and emotion-regulating neurotransmitters in the brain.

SSRIs specifically increase the levels of serotonin in the brain by inhibiting the reuptake (absorption) of serotonin into brain cells. This makes more serotonin available to improve message transmission between neurons.

SNRIs, meanwhile, increase the levels of both serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain. They inhibit the reuptake of these two neurotransmitters, making them more available to enhance communication between neurons.

By increasing the levels of these neurotransmitters, anxiety is reduced, mood is improved, and overall emotional well-being is enhanced.

Age seems to play a role. 

At 20 years old, Crooks brain was not fully developed and wouldn’t have been until around age 25. 

Some research, including by Dr Amir Raz, a professor of clinical neuroscience in the psychiatry department at McGill University, suggests that tinkering with serotonin in children’s brains is a risky idea. 

He told Scientific American in 2007: ‘The human brain is developing exponentially when we are very young.

‘And exposure to antidepressants may affect or influence the wiring of the brain, especially when it comes to certain elements that have to do with stress, emotion and the regulation of these.’ 

Not all doctors are convinced, though. In response to Dr Gøtzsche’s message on X, Dr Benjamin Martin Janaway, a psychiatrist in the UK, said: ‘Antidepressants are chemical modulators. They cannot plan and execute an assassination attempt.’ 

Dr Hands stressed that everyone deals with their depression differently and a ‘subpopulation of people who may respond to antidepressants with suicidal ideation or thoughts and or actions. 

‘However, those situations have to be viewed within the contact context or the matric of the person’s life.’

For instance, Crooks was reportedly on decent terms with his family, but didn’t spend much time with them, suggesting strife in the household, Dr Hands suggested. 

He was also said by a former classmate to have been bullied by other classmates. He had been teased for the way he dressed, with the former classmate noting that he was ‘lonely’ and often seemed ‘socially reserved.’

Many perpetrators of violent crimes who have depression feel invisible, unnoticed by others and more often than not made out to be a bad person, ‘weird’, or dangerous.

The motive is often to reveal oneself to the world and gain the attention of which they believe they had been deprived. They want to seek a form of vengeance against the world that mischaracterized them and from their standpoint, hates them.

Dr Hands said: ‘The hatred can accumulate and get externalized. Two things happen: not only do they get to act out against the world that has not seen them, that has mischaracterized them, and from their standpoint, who hates them, they get to punish them.

‘They get to kill their aggressor, they get to get to be seen. And then they can act out their own self-destructive tendencies, and destroy themselves in one fell swoop. That aggression and self-hatred are absolutely critical to actions of violence towards others.’