"It's a chemical sledgehammer" - Children in foster care

The chemical abuse of U.S. children in foster care represent the collapse of civilized medicine.
The Associated Press report (below) provides but a glimpse into a world of wontonly prescribed psychotropic drugs for children.

Children are being chemically assaulted under the guise of "treatment." Psychiatrists under the influence of drug manufacturers are misusing their prescribing license all across the U.S when they prescribe toxic combinations of psychotropic drugs for helpless children.

''The picture is bleak, and rooted in profound human suffering.''

That was the stinging verdict of a report on psychiatric treatment of foster children, including the misuse of medication issued by outgoing Texas state comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn in December. The report recommended hiring a full-time medical director for foster children and requiring prior approval for certain prescriptions.  http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/hccfoster06

In New York--''Children who are having normal reactions to the trauma of being separated from their families are often misdiagnosed or overdiagnosed as suffering from psychiatric problems, and the system is too quick to medicate,'' said Mike Arsham of the Child Welfare Organizing Project. '
'It's a chemical sledgehammer that makes children easier to manage.''

~ more... ~


Foster children routinely drugged in Florida

APATHY, DRUGS A POTENT MIX FOR FOSTER KIDS

Fred Grimm, Miami Herald, September 18, 2003

Substitute the word ''my'' for ''foster.'' Then consider that
psychotropic drugs are being popped into these children like aspirin.
Some without ever seeing a psychiatric pediatrician. Some of them
infants and toddlers. Most of them unmonitored for side effects.
Would you acquiesce? Would you shrug it off, if they were your kids,
rather than some troublesome horde downgraded to the caste of foster
children?

Would you say, ''Yeah, OK, what the hell?,'' if the state of Florida
decided to medicate your toddler with buspirone or pentobarbital or
bupropion or amphetamines or lithium or sertraline?

Suppose the Florida Statewide Advocacy Council -- after learning
psychotropic drugs were being fed to your preschooler -- called this
a "disturbing discovery since most of these drugs have not been
approved for use in young children by the federal Food and Drug
Administration.''

SCARY SIDE EFFECTS

Imagine if the state were drugging your young child despite possible
side effects that included "decreased blood flow to the brain,
cardiac arrhythmias, disruption of growth hormone leading to
suppression of growth in the body and brain of a child, weight loss,
permanent neurological tics, dystonia, addiction and abuse, including
withdrawal reactions, psychosis, depression, insomnia, agitation and
social withdrawal, suicidal tendencies, possible atrophy in the
brain, worsening of the very symptom the drugs are suppose to
improve, and decreased ability to learn.''

Not to mention the risk of tardive dyskinesia, which, according to
the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, is
another potential effect of anti-psychotic drugs characterized by
"repetitive, involuntary, purposeless movements. Features of the
disorder may include grimacing, tongue protrusion, lip smacking,
puckering and pursing, and rapid eye blinking. Rapid movements of the
arms, legs, and trunk may also occur. Impaired movements of the
fingers may appear as though the patient is playing an invisible
guitar or piano.''

'INTERESTING' FINDINGS

I don't know you. Maybe the potential of a sleepless, depressed,
withdrawn, suicidal, undersized, addicted, lip-smacking child playing
perpetual air guitar doesn't trouble you. But if it does, if you
would find this an unacceptable risk for your own children, then why
do you assent, in your mute apathy, to the treatments described by
the advocacy council, which pulled the files of 1,180 foster kids
(out of some 15,000) and found that 652 were being medicated on
psychotropic drugs?

The Department of Children & Families complained that the sample was
too small and yielded misleading results. Florida Medicaid, which
funds this mass child drugging, called the report's finding
"interesting and of concern.''

Interesting? If the recipient of these drugs had been the child of
someone in the Florida Medicaid hierarchy, reaction would have a bit
stronger than ''interesting and of concern.'' It was as these foster
kids were no more than lab monkeys....