Alyssa Bustamante was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday. learn about her and 5 other killers who had prescription drug problems in this photo slideshow.
Bustamante, who was prescribed to take the antidepressant Prozac, is one of many people who have committed murders or other violent crimes after being prescribed, abusing, or going off of prescription drugs.
There is a whole body of work that serves to attempt to draw a connection between prescription drugs--especially those classified as SSRIs--and violence.
As Barry Farber wrote on Newsmax in July 2001, there are many violent crimes committed by people on antidepressants: Have the rest of you noticed how close to unanimously all the high school shooters, random killers, baby-drowners, first- and second-grade knife murderers, first-time committers of violence and unlikely suicides were on some kind of anti-depressant at the time of their dark deed? he wrote.
Despite this apparent connection between prescription drugs and violence, and breathless media reports to that effect, a 2002 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry drew the conclusion that no such connection actually exists, as only 2.4 percent of the violent incidents the study looked at were committed by people taking antidepressants.
The conflicting studies and reports serve to further muddy the issue of whether a connection can be made between prescription drugs and violence. But this photo slideshow still provides a number of examples of young people who may have in fact been pushed over the edge by the use of antidepressants and other prescription medications.
Fifteen-year-old Kipland Kinkel was sentenced Nov. 10, 1998, to 111 years in prison for the May 21,1998 shooting rampage that left his parents and two fellow students in Springfield, Oregon, dead. CNN reported that Kinkel took Prozac starting in 1997, and that he may have been going through withdrawal from the antidepressant at the time of the murders. ReutersPekka-Eric Auvinen, an 18-year-old Finnish man, opened fire at Jokela High School school in southern Finland November 7, 2007, killing eight people then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish news outlet, reported that the young man was prescribed an antidepressant in 2006, and that he had stopped or reduced his consumption of the medication shortly before the shooting spree.ReutersDavid Laffer pleaded guilty to the June 19 shooting murders of four people at a pharmacy in Suffolk County, Long Island, N.Y. He was sentenced to five life terms in prison without parole for the four murders and a count of multiple murders. Suffolk Police described him as a pain-pill abuser, and state records showed that he and his wife Melinda Brady obtained almost 12,000 from area doctors in the four years leading up to the slays.HandoutIllinois 16-year-old Clifford Baker was sentenced to life in prison in October for the Aug. 4, 2010, shooting murders of 53-year-old Debra Tish and 60-year-old John Mahon. Baker had a suicidal episode about a week before the slays, after which he was prescribed the antidepressant Cymbalta. Monroe McWard, an attorney for Baker, said in court that Cymbalta and other drugs have been known to cause suicidal behaviors and thoughts in people under the age of 18.Fayette County Sheriff's officOn March 11, 2009, German 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer went on a shooting spree at his former secondary school, the Albertville-Realschule in Winnenden, Germany. Kretschmer, who killed 15 people the died in a shootout with police, was prescribed undisclosed pain medication for depression at the time of the school shooting. This photo shows one of his victims being carted out of the school where he went on his murderous rampage.Reuters