Tumbler Ridge: Anti-Depressants and the Developing Mind
I’m sure you heard the news: another school shooting. Jesse Van Rootselaar, the 18-year-old perpetrator, killed two family members before targeting Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, claiming the lives of five young students and one educator while injuring dozens more. It’s heartbreaking story, one that we’ve heard all too often these days, and yet, we really haven’t seemed to be any closer to stopping these than we were 20 years ago.
Usually the one solution that I hear is to have tighter gun control laws. Personally, I’m not really a “gun” guy, so I wouldn’t actually oppose more restrictive gun ownership rules. Yet, I also don’t believe that they’re really the solution to this particular problem. If you go back in time… say, before 1999… there were still lots of guns around, and they were probably easier to acquire than today, and yet we didn’t have school shootings happening with the frequency that they are now.
I have spent some time digging around to see what the numbers actually look like, to see if the data actually supports the idea that school shooting happen more frequently now than they did before 1999. I chose 1999 because that is when the Columbine shooting happened, which was in my mind the first one. It turned out that though there were more shootings than I had expected pre-1999, the bottom line is that yes, they are happening about 4 times the frequency since 1999 than the 30 years before it. You can play with the data, changing what counts as a “school shooting,” and altering other aspects of the definition, but from what I was seeing we still get a 3-5x higher rate today than before 1999. What makes this even worse is that gun violence in the US actually peaked in the 1970s, and ran at historically low levels from 2000-2020. Even today they are lower than the 1970s peaks. So we can’t even say that school shootings are just part of an overall trend of increasing gun violence.
Which begs the simple question: what has changed? Well, one theory that I came across 15 years ago or so keeps coming popping back up in my mind, and that theory is this: what changed is the invention and mass prescription of anti-depressant medications. They are a class of drugs known as SSRIs, which stands for “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors” that came out in the late 80s. A lot of people have been helped by them, however, the drug manufacturers and the FDA also note and warn users that there can be “rare” but also very real negative side effects in some people. The FDA considers something “rare” if it occurs in less than 1 in a thousand people.
What are these “rare” side effects? All antidepressants carry a black box warning (the FDA’s strongest warning) for increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, adolescents, and young adults (up to age 24) during initial treatment phases. This warning often lists related symptoms to monitor, including: anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania or mania.
Notice how the warning specifically notes the dangers to people under the age of 24. Now you have to think about just how many people under the age of 24 are on these drugs. Using the most recent data regarding Canada from 2023, from IQVIA pharmacy dispensing data (covering community pharmacies):
- Ages 12–17: National prevalence ~5.7% in 2023 (up from 1.7% in 2019), with females higher (~7.6%) than males (~3.9%). Provincial variation: Highest in Atlantic provinces (~8.0%), lowest in Quebec (~4.3%).
- Ages 18–24: National prevalence ~14.6% in 2023 (up from 9.0% in 2019), again higher in females (~21.8%) than males (~7.9%). Provincial highs: Atlantic provinces (~20.7%), Ontario (~14.5%).
- Overall youth surge: Pronounced increases in these groups from 2019–2023, while older groups (65+) declined. Women aged 18–24 often >2x men’s rates.
We don’t have exact data on how many people Canada has aged 12-24, but reasonable estimates put it at around 6-6.5 million people. If the “rare” side effect of “hostility” occurs even in 1 in only 100,000, you still have 60-65 people around the country that are going to experience that side effect. What if it was 1 in 10,000 though? To me, the math starts to be a little scary. It may be a “rare” side effect, but it’s also rare to be struck by lightning… and yet, it does happen!
At this point, the next question I ask is this: when we look at the history of school shootings, how many of the shooters were on SSRIs? This is where it gets tricky. As it is medical information, it is private, and we only know if somebody is or was on them if a relative releases the information. Some estimates put it at 10-20%, others closer to 50%. You also find qualifiers like, “they weren’t on them at the time of the incident,” but as the warnings state, people are at the greatest risk when dosages are changed or when they’re coming off taking them. In the case of Tumbler Ridge, Van Rootselaar claimed in 2023 (via social media accounts linked to them) to be treating ADHD and OCD with antidepressants. If you go to this website, www.ssristories.net, you’ll find a collection of over 5000+ news stories with the full media article available, mainly criminal in nature, that have appeared in the media (newspapers, TV, scientific journals) or that were part of FDA testimony in either 1991, 2004 or 2006, in which antidepressants are mentioned or in some cases family, friends, law enforcement or coroners have verified the presence of an antidepressant in a perpetrator.
So what do we have here? Anything? I think there’s something. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I keep coming back to the disparity between adult and teen responses to SSRIs. It does align with neurodevelopmental science. Adolescent brains undergo rapid pruning and rewiring, particularly in the prefrontal cortex (decision-making, impulse control) and limbic system (emotions, rewards). This “construction zone” makes teens more sensitive to external influences, including medications that alter serotonin levels. While SSRIs can alleviate depression, they might disrupt this delicate balance in some, fostering disinhibition or emotional blunting that manifests as violence.
But more than just aligning with neurodevelopmental science, I think it also aligns with what the Writings say about the developing mind. For starters, the Writings tell us that we don’t become fully rational until around the age of 20. We also have passages like this, that tell us how the different layers of the mind open and close to each other based on how we are progressing on our spiritual path:
From childhood to early youth communication is opened up with the interior natural, by the person’s learning about what is decent, public-spirited, and honourable, both through what parents and teachers tell him and through his own efforts to find out about such matters. During early youth to later youth however communication is opened up between the natural and the rational, by his learning about what is true and what is good so far as his public life and private life are concerned, and above all about what is good and what is true so far as his spiritual life is concerned, all of which he learns about through listening to and reading the Word.
Indeed insofar as he uses truths to immerse himself in good deeds, that is, insofar as he puts the truths he learns into practice, the rational is opened up; but insofar as he does not use truths to immerse himself in good deeds, or does not put truths into practice, the rational is not opened up. Nevertheless the things he has come to know remain within the natural; that is to say, they remain in his memory, left on the doorstep so to speak outside the house. (AC 5126.3-4)
This passage is one of many that give us some deeper insight into the complexity of the human mind, and I think we as New Church people need to take the spiritual reality into account when we are making decisions that do affect our mind. These drugs are called “mind altering” after all. The trouble is that the medical world takes no account of spiritual reality, and despite their best intentions, they really don’t know all that much about how the brain or mind works.
If we think beyond specific passages and look at the bigger story of our life as described by the Writings, they outline spiritual stages: childhood’s void (innocence of ignorance), youth’s knowledge accumulation, and a potential crisis leading to awakening. Think about the Joseph story we just went through: the older brothers had an “awakening” in response to the famine crisis. In teens, this crisis—amplified by an undeveloped rational level—might explain why SSRIs, effective in mature adults, sometimes backfire. Theologically, the adolescent mind is not spiritually mature, making it susceptible to influences that distort divine order, manifesting as aggression, hostility, or of course some other unintended side effect.
Now I want to acknowledge that some of you aren’t going to like this article at all. The math says that the odds are high that you or a family member is on SSRIs, and even benefitting from them. I accept that people have benefitted from them. However, what I’m writing here isn’t meant to be an indictment of anybody’s specific choices. But I am hoping to open your mind to seeing this as potentially part of the problem when it comes to school shootings. Sure, I think other factors are at play too, but what if we changed the rules that no SSRIs or psychotropic drugs were given to people under the age of 24? Would school shootings decrease? I don’t know. But I think they would. Could I be wrong? Sure.
Yet I see this issue as one where the theological insights from the Writings and the empirical evidence are pointing in the same direction. That is what the New Church is supposed to be: a marriage of science and religion. Ultimately I wish society could foster a more holistic approach to youth mental health—one that nurtures natural spiritual progression over hasty chemical adjustments. Maybe then we could avert tragedies while honoring the journey of regeneration.