Found some interesting stuff about this at wikipedia.org:
"Beyond lawsuits, greater controversies have surrounded D&D due to allegations of its connections to devil worship, as well as claims that RPGs in general lead to suicide. These allegations were popularized in a novel called Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe. The book was turned into a TV movie featuring a young Tom Hanks in the key role of a mentally unstable collegian who experiences psychotic episodes and loses himself in the game world. It should be noted that the allegations in the book and film were based on faulty interpretation of William Dear's 1979 investigation. Dear, a private investigator, searched for a wealthy college student, James Dallas Egbert III. While the search proved successful, the brilliant and depressed boy committed suicide after a quarrel with his wealthy, domineering father. Dear later wrote The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III [5] written from case notes. The author described his own experiences learning D&D, as a key to understanding Egbert's withdrawal from reality. Dear also makes it implicitly clear that Egbert's suicide had more to do with family troubles than with roleplaying games. [6]
"One of the big names in the anti-D&D movement was Patricia Pulling. Pulling founded Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD), a one-person organization, after her son (Irving "Bink" Pulling) committed suicide which she believed was from playing the famous RPG Dungeons & Dragons. Pulling wrote Interviewing Techniques For Adolescents (1988), a primer for police officers who are dealing with crimes that involve role-playing games. Michael A. Stackpole (himself a writer and designer of role-playing games) wrote The Pulling Report [7] in 1990 debunking Pulling's claims.
"Chick Publications produced a comic book tract called "Dark Dungeons"[8] about a girl who got involved in witchcraft through a role-playing game, and cast a spell on her father to make him buy her books and miniatures.
"Such negative portrayals of role-players, ironically, may have originated from an initial inability of some outside observers to properly differentiate between reality and the immersive role-playing aspects of game play. Misperception has been the major prejudice that role-players have had to face over the years. Some religious individuals consider roleplaying games immoral or irreligious for multiple reasons, most commonly due to game uses of magic, spells, the worship of pagan gods, the glorification of violence, and the use of supernatural powers (whose game uses are not always distinguished from reality by observers). Such accusations continued well beyond the 1980s and into the 1990s. There have been numerous studies (including several from within the RPG industry) exploring this allegation that have generally concluded that not only does D&D not seem to encourage suicide, but players of this kind of game are in fact less prone to take their own lives. For example, studies conducted by Michael Stackpole show that the suicide rate is actually lower among gamers than non-gamers.
"Often this connection is pointed out when young people are indicted for crimes, such as a 2001 murder of Robert M. Schwartz, a prominent scientist in Loudoun County, Virginia. The connection was also made during the investigation of the Stephanie Crowe murder in San Diego, where Stephanie's teenage brother and two friends were accused of the killing because prosecutors said that the killing reflected a brother's hatred of his sister and the three boys' interest in role-playing fantasy games. The three youths maintain they are innocent and a transient named Richard Tuite was later arrested, charged, and convicted of manslaughter. [9]
"The Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs has published a report on "Roleplaying as a Hobby." The report describes roleplaying as a stimulating hobby that promotes creativity. [10]"
