Antidepressant use linked to 28 cases of murder, regulator told

ANTIDEPRESSANTS have been linked to 28 reports of murder and 32 cases of murderous thoughts, in cases referred to the UK medicines regulator over the past 30 years.

The pills, known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIS), which include common drugs such as Prozac and Seroxat, are prescribed 40million times each year in Britain. But a Freedom of Information request for BBC Panorama discovered that the Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency had received 60 reports of murders or murderous thoughts linked to the drugs in the past three decades.

Prof Peter Tyrer, a psychiatrist at Imperial College London, has been assessing the performance of SSRIS. Although the link between murders and antidepressants in cases referred to the MHRA does not mean the drugs caused the events, Prof Tyrer told programme-makers that the extreme sideeffects of the drugs should be investigated further.

“You can never be quite certain with a rare side-effect whether it’s linked to a drug or not because it could be related to other things,” he said. “But it’s happened just too frequently with this class of drug to make it random. It’s obviously related to the drug but we don’t know exactly why.”

The programme makers also looked into claims that the Batman movie killer James Holmes, who shot dead 12 people at a midnight premier cinema screening in Colorado in 2012, was taking the SSRI sertraline at the time of the murders. By analysing Holmes’s notebooks and interviews with him

‘It’s happened just too frequently with this class of drug to make it random. It’s obviously related to the drug’

carried out after the killings, the programme found that he appeared to lose his fear of consequences as the drugs removed his anxiety. As the dose was increased, the programme shows his obsessive thoughts became psychotic.

Prof David Healy, a psychiatrist who was an adviser to Holmes’s defence team and interviewed him while he was awaiting trial, said: “I believe if he hadn’t taken the sertraline he wouldn’t have murdered anyone.”

However, Dr William Reid, a psychiatrist who also interviewed Holmes, told the programme-makers that he thought the killings were a result of mental illness and “completely unrelated to the medication”.

Manufacturer Pfizer, which developed sertraline, said a causal link between it and homicidal behaviour has not been established, and that the drug has helped millions of people.

Panorama: A Prescription for Murder? will be broadcast on BBC One today at 8pm.