Mother calls for warning on medicines

THE mother of young man who carried out a murder-suicide has called on Irish psychiatry to “face-up” to the evidence that antidepressants can have dangerous side effects.

Leonie Fennell, mother of Shane Clancy, 22, who stabbed himself to death after stabbing his friend, Sebastian Creane, to death in Bray in 2009 said other countries had explicit warnings in relation to the antidepressant her son was on, but here the warnings are not as prominent and seem not taken seriously by some psychiatrists.

Shane’s family believe the antidepressant he had been prescribed, citalopram or cipramil as it is called elsewhere, drove him to carry out the attacks, and an inquest into his death last year returned an open verdict.