A couple of years ago, Alyssa Bustamante was just another misunderstood teen with a defiant glaze and a goth look. Now recently turned 18, she's serving a life sentence in jail after found guilty for the murder of nine years old Elizabeth Olten.
But what could have lead to such horrible violent act from this apparently normal teen from Missouri?
Is Alyssa Bustamante a monster in disguise or could it be that her acts were strongly influenced by the negative effects of the a high dosage of antidepressants?
A boy in Canada , although experimenting with various drugs at the early age of 15, had reportedly no violent tendencies killed his friend with a kitchen knife. Those who knew him said his personality changed radically after being prescribed Prozac. Even the judge presiding his case stated that drugs such as Prozac and other antidepressants may have extremely negative effects on teen, that often lead to violence towards themselves or others.
In UK, a boy under 18 beat his father to death after taking high doses of Prozac and citalopram, a drug that was illegal for patients under the legal age. In Germany Tim Kretschmer opened fire on his classmates without saying a word, just like it was in a video game. It's clear he couldn't have been lucid at the moment, but could his brain be altered by medication in such a way he was unable to realize what was happening?
The fact that drugs are killing teenagers all over the world may sound almost like a cliché, something wide accepted as a downsize of our modern world, something we don't really want to hear about until it happens in our neighborhood. But these are not the generic illegal drugs sold on on a back alley, these are legal drugs , prescribed by doctors for patients who are trying to overcome their problems.
Prozac side-effects have created news about suicidal teens and shocking brutal murders, but should we blame the pharmaceutical companies or the doctors for giving wrong prescriptions?
The theory that pharmaceuticals companies such as Eli Lilly purposely hid informations from the public about their products, information that pointed to some test results showing how antidepressants increase suicidal tendency, by causing an imbalance in the brain's biochemicals was regarded as a conspiracy theory, and yet , we are bombarded by the news with more and more tragic stories.
We can't help but wondering if these gruesome crimes could have been avoided if companies would have been a little bit more transparent, if doctors would have treated their jobs with a little bit more responsibility and tried to find out what exactly was the problem with these troubled teens before choking them with pills.
Maybe Alyssa Bustamante would have prepared for graduating high school this year, instead of looking at us from behind bars.
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