Dead Wrong: How Psychiatric Drugs Can Kill Your Child

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Matthew was a very loved child.

He was an 18-year-old American boy

like everybody else in this country is.

Normal boy.

When he was born he was just the

cutest little baby with big brown eyes.

He was a handsome little boy and

he was very happy all the time.

He was such a free spirit. He was so happy

all the time and he had a smile to die for.

I remember Matt's smile,

boy, I'll tell ya somethin'.

He was a charmer, yeah, those eyes of his

could probably get him in a lot of trouble.

He was always involved, you know.

He liked to be involved in sports...

We used to play basketball, paintball.

He was always a scrapper.

That's one thing we liked about him, if

you picked on him, he'd pick on you back.

Someone to always talk to, personal

relationships, someone you could depend on.

He was a great person, lots of fun.

I miss him.

I miss him every day of my life.

We called him Matthew,

we called him Matt.

The kids, the girls a lot called him

Matty, you know, but he was my Matt.

And he loved to fool around with

the kids and wrestle with the boys.

And he and Annie were very, very close

because they were the closest in age.

Those two, they were

like two peas in a pod.

But, unfortunately, apparently he was having

trouble sleeping and he was having bad dreams

and waking up and starting

to have like panic attacks.

That's when I said to him, "You

know Matt, maybe it would be helpful"

"if you talked to somebody outside of

the family. Would you want to do that?"

So, I made an appointment with him.

So we go in there and she sits down

with us and after no more than 15 minutes

of talking with Matthew and asking some

questions, she gives us samples of Lexapro.

So I said, "What about,

what about side effects?"

I said, "You know, what should we

expect from something like this?"

And she says, "Well, you know,

they're very well tolerated."

And she said, "You know, you either

could have like headache or nausea"

"or maybe some insomnia."

So we went home with our

sample pack of Lexapro and

at that point he

stopped wanting to talk.

He seemed to be withdrawing more.

This was weird behavior for him.

Well, a lot was happening at this time,

also, and he was graduating from high school.

Of course, the big plan, the kids

always, they go to Senior Beach Week.

He didn't want to go. He

wanted to go visit his brother.

And off he went.

The day that he was supposed to be

coming home it was around one o'clock,

I hadn't heard from him yet. He was

supposed to call me when he finally left.

Later on, I guess it was after I got

off work, I called and he didn't answer.

But a little while later he

called me back and he said,

he might have said he was

almost to North Carolina.

It was about 11:
30 and I called. He

said, "I'm fine, I just passed Roanoke."

I woke up at around 2:30, kind

of jumped up, looked at the clock

and realized he should

have been home an hour ago.

So I called the cellphone.

It went straight to voicemail.

I kept calling and calling. I'm like,

"Matthew, answer the friggin' phone!"

I was like so upset. I fell asleep, woke up

again, it was about six o'clock in the morning.

I started getting ready

for work, went to work.

I could hardly function. I went

and told my boss I have to go home.

Get in the door, phone's ringing...

...and there's this man on

the other end and he said,

"I'm looking for the

family of Matthew Steubing."

I said, "This is his

mother, who's this?"

And he said, "I'm calling

about the jumping."

Our world blew apart.

We couldn't imagine

that this had happened.

We couldn't understand, 'cause this,

this just wasn't Matthew.

None of this was Matthew,

I mean, it was like,

made no sense, it made no sense.

That was the beginning of my story.

As a mother, I needed to make sense

of what had happened to my child.

There were so many

questions. What had we missed?

The first answer came six

months after Matthew's death

when my husband found a magazine article

that linked psychiatric drugs to suicide.

I was horrified.

And yet, I knew we had found the

answer to the biggest question of all,

"How could this have happened?"

The article answered some questions

but made me think of so many more.

I had to find out for

myself. I had to do something.

This is for you, Matthew.

Before, all I had ever

heard about psychiatric drugs

from the media, at schools,

in the doctor's office,

was how safe and effective they were.

You know, you feel sad and that means you

have a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Just take a pill and that will

help even you out, no problem.

But this certainly didn't

happen in Matthew's case.

Something was wrong with that

story and I needed to find out what.

But were there any professionals who

could tell me what's really going on?

Dr. David Stein, a psychologist who

has written many books and articles

against the use of psychiatric drugs

on children, agreed to talk with me.

So I made the three-hour

drive to see him.

Hi, how are you doing? Good to see you.

- I'm Celeste.

- I'm Dave Stein. Good to see you. Hi folks.

Tell me, what brought you to

drive all the way down here?

- Well, we went to a doctor,

a psychologist... - Okay.

...and my son was

diagnosed with depression

and we were told that it was being

caused by a chemical imbalance.

Is there such a thing as a

chemical imbalance in the brain

that can cause psychological problems?

No, actually that's one of the misstatements

of disinformation or misinformation

that's coming out, and unfortunately

I think your psychologist believes

there's a chemical imbalance

and a lot of people do, the

psychologists, educators.

The psychiatrists certainly accept it

and now pediatricians are accepting it.

It is not caused by a chemical imbalance

and what makes me angry is so many of

the doctors are just buying into that.

It's just not true.

And there is no test or anything that could

have been done to determine that. Am I right?

They claim that they've found this chemical

imbalance or that anatomical problem

or anomaly with the

brain or nervous system

and yet if you were to send your child

to a lab to have the chemical tests done

on his blood or urine, they would look at you

like you're insane because it can't be done.

So what they claim is an imbalance

cannot be measured by any laboratory

or urine tests or PE scans or CAT scans.

None of it can be replicated

at the clinical level

and there are about a thousand

claims that come out every year

where they think they've found the cause

of depression or ADD or bipolar disorder.

None of it is true.

- Does that answer your question, Celeste?

- Yes. I think so.

I feel that if I had known better, if I'd had

the information in front of me to make a decision,

he would never have been on that drug, to be

honest, he never would have been on that drug

and I believe we would

have worked it through,

so I feel, I feel to blame.

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