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Alliance for Natural Health November 22, 2011
http://www.anh-usa.org/antipsychotic-drugs-given-to-kids-in-foster-care/
Want foster kids to behave? Give them harsh tranquilizers developed for schizophrenic patients!
According to a shocking new study published in the journal Pediatrics [1], foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychotic drugs, even if they’re not mentally ill and they don’t have any psychiatric symptoms. In fact, they’re given the drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid.
Kids in foster care with behavior problems are being given two antipsychotic drugs at once, according to the study. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel, and Zyprexa (and if you want to see something terrifying, just look at the list of Zyprexa’s side effects [2]!). The drugs were developed for schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. But schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are extremely rare in young children, and the foster children in question did not have any psychiatric symptoms. They just came from bad homes.
Note that these drugs were never tested on young people during the FDA trials—and certainly not on people with developing brains. The latest research says the brain is still developing into one’s 20s. Foster care ends at age 18.
The New York Times reports [3] that doctors and policy-makers have, in recent years, grown concerned about high rates of overall psychiatric drug use in the foster care system, the government-financed program that provides temporary living arrangements for 400,000 to 500,000 children and adolescents. Previous studies have found that children in foster care receive psychiatric medications about twice as often as kids outside the system.
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