Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors:
The Trials of a Paradoxical Phenomenon

icTendic oday's society makes jokes about an individual's edginess with a quip that suggests the individual should "pop some Prozac," and the antidepressant will provide hours of bliss. Some patients who were prescribed the same drug; however, have not experienced the same sense of utopia. In August 2001, a Wyoming jury awarded $8 million to the family of Donald Schnell, who took the lives of three people before taking his own after ingesting two tablets of the antidepressant Paxil. According to the jury's decision, SmithKline, doing business as GlaxoSmith-Kline, was 80 percent responsible for the murder-homicide.