Haq’s doctor: Medication caused deadly thoughts

SEATTLE, Washington -- Naveed Haq was taking a prescription drug known to induce homicidal ideas on rare occasions. The disclosure came Thursday as attorneys for the 32-year-old presented their insanity defense for Haq’s actions on July 28, 2006. Haq is accused of fatally shooting one woman and wounding five others at the Jewish Federation of Seattle.

Defense expert Dr. Robert Julien testified Haq, who has a history of mental illness, was prescribed Effexor in July 2005 to help control his depression. The drug, however, is an anti-depressant that is not government-approved for treating bipolar depression – a condition Haq had been diagnosed as having since 1996.

“The incident may well not have occurred had lithium or other diagnosis and treatment with anti-psychotic drugs been continued,” Julien said. Haq was taken off lithium earlier in July 2005 because he complained of tremors, a common side affect of the mood stabilizing drug. Julien, an anesthesiologist and psychopharmacologist, studies how drugs affect the brain and behaviors.

Another doctor testified Haq recognized he had mood disorders beginning in the seventh grade – a sign of bipolar disorder and not schizoaffective disorder. Dr. James Missett explained that bipolar disorders are most likely to present themselves as depression in teenagers. Haq had told Missett he would experience crying or rage for no reason, saying “I would wake up and ask myself what kind of day am I going to have today?”

Dr. James Missett said the symptoms persisted and increased as Haq grew older but that Haq did not tell anyone until he was in dental school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was subsequently diagnosed as bipolar. According to Missett, medical reports indicate Haq complained he heard voices that would tell him to do violent things, and had hallucinations of people whose bodies would appear to fade and glow. Significant, Missett said, because Haq also later reported “his perception of his own body glowing at the Jewish Federation.”

–In Session staff