Going off your meds could have serious consequences

Only 4 percent of Americans with mental illness kill. But many of those cases involve people who didn't pay enough attention to their condition.

The Campus Police at Northern Illinois University say Stephen Kazmierczak, the man responsible for killing five people and himself, had stopped taking his medication before the shootings, according to news reports.

The medications the Northern Illinois shooter were not identified. But the incident speaks to the potential consequences of deciding to not take any prescribed medications.

Once on their medications, physicians say, patients feel fine and feel they do not need their medicine. But any psychological disorder should be treated like any other disease.

"If you have diabetes or a different health concern, you can be stable on your medications and feeling really good, but things would go really bad if you went off that medication and it's the same thing with any psychiatric medications," said Elisabeth Kinghorn, an Idaho medical professional who spoke to western news outlets.