Will Korea suffer its own school massacre?

By Anthony Hegarty

The Sandy Hook killings of young children just before last Christmas were very distressing but not surprising.

It has happened before and it will happen again, and as in each previous case the gun debate rages. While the emphasis on automatically loading weapons is the same it should be remembered that the weapons used to kill the children at Sandy Hook were handguns and the said automatic rifle was found in the killer’s car.

In 2001 in Japan eight elementary school pupils were stabbed to death and 15 wounded; on the same day as the American Sandy Hook killings 22 children were stabbed in an elementary school in China; yet despite these tragedies nobody discusses banning knives.

What is largely absent from the debate in these high profile school shootings is the states of mind of the killers. I looked at 15 school shooting incidents in the U.S. which resulted in 80 deaths and 74 injuries. The perpetrators were all either taking mind altering medications or were in withdrawal from them for symptoms of depression and or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Interestingly a common side effect of ADHD drugs is depression!

The latest available information (2009) from the Korean Ministry of Health states that 64,066 children / young adults were being prescribed drugs for ADHD. These can be broken down into the following age groups; 0~4 years: 665 (1.0 percent), 5~9 years: 22,068 (34.5 percent), 10~14years: 29,679 (46.3 percent); 15~19years: 10,207 (15.9 percent); 20 years and above: 1,447 (2.3 percent).

The most commonly prescribed drugs in Korea are Methylphenidate by Janssen, and Atomexetine by Lilly. Methylphenidate is marketed as Concerta XL and included in the many side effects are ``changes in personality,” and ``seeing, feeling or hearing things which are not real” which are in fact psychotic symptoms often referred to as hallucinations or the more serious command hallucinations whereby the sufferer hears "voices in his head.”'

Atomexetine, which is marketed as Strattera, also carries the risk of mood swings, hostility, aggression and hearing voices. Both of these drugs can also lead to suicidal thoughts.

Interestingly, in Korea in 2009 there were 450 youth suicides between the ages of 5 and 19 years, although I make no suggestion that they were taking the particular drugs mentioned.

Despite the large numbers of children taking medications for ADHD there is not one shred of biological evidence that the condition actually exists. Janssen’s literature describes a child with ADHD as one who finds it ``hard to sit still” and / or ``to concentrate”. Lilly’s website suggests that children with ADHD show ``disruptive behaviours….” However, these symptoms also describe most healthy children!

Doctors have for many years relied on the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to arrive at various diagnoses. My own copy of the DSM lists a number of symptoms and states very clearly patients must suffer from at least six of them for a period of not less than six months before ADHD can be diagnosed. A major concern is that this guidance is not being followed and these mind altering drugs are being dished out by general practitioners who might not be qualified in matters of psychiatry.

Indeed, Canadian researchers discovered that many children were being wrongly diagnosed simply due to the fact that they were far younger than their classmates due to being born just within that school academic year and their behaviour was merely a lack of maturity that their classmates had acquired. Indeed, Lilly’s definition of ADHD continues "…behaviour not in keeping with those of the same age with similar intelligence and development”.

It is therefore essential that the government re-examines the diagnostic practices of ADHD because if 62,589 Korean children up to the age of 19 years are on these mind altering drugs, no different to those assailants in the American school shootings mentioned above, they are spread out over the 11,360 Korean schools which amounts to 5.5 per school.

They may not have ready access to guns, but a combination of violent computer games and knives are in abundance!

The writer is managing director of Discreet Services Risk & Security Management Consulting. His email address is helios@discreet-services.com.