https:// www.nytimes.com/2001/06/08/us/jury-awards-6.4-million-in-killings-tied-to-drug.html
But researchers who have testified in the cases have said that, even though the drugs are effective in most cases, in some patients the drugs cause agitation and violence.
Lawyers in the Wyoming case, tried in Federal District Court in Cheyenne, said Donald Schell, 60, visited an internist on Feb. 12, 1998, and received a prescription for Paxil to treat depression. The lawyers said Mr. Schell took two pills the next day before fatally shooting his wife, Rita; their daughter, Deborah Tobin; and their 9-month-old granddaughter, Alyssa; and himself.
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Ms. Tobin's husband and Mr. Schell's sister filed a wrongful death suit against SmithKline Beecham, which merged last year with Glaxo Wellcome to form GlaxoSmithKline.
During the trial, the eight jurors heard that Mr. Schell had taken Prozac years earlier for depression, but that he had stopped taking the drug because he became agitated and experienced hallucinations.
The family's lawyers, James E. Fitzgerald of Cheyenne and Andy Vickery of Houston, told the jury that the fault was not so much in the drug itself but in the company's failure to sufficiently warn doctors and patients that the effects of the drug could include agitation and violence.
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Mr. Vickery said in a telephone interview that in Germany, warnings are included on the packages of at least two drugs in this class, Prozac and Paxil. The Prozac package warns that the drugs could lead to suicide attempts. The Paxil package says a sedative should be taken with the drug.
Those warnings are not on packages in the United States, but the insert for doctors says, under the heading suicide, that ''close supervision of high-risk patients should accompany initial drug therapy.'
… paxil is a ssri like prozac e.a. ….