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Feds Looking At Psych Meds For Foster Kids
December 2, 2011
A federal study released Thursday is sparking Congressional scrutiny of the high rates at which children in state care are prescribed potent psychotropic drugs.
In Florida, one of five states examined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, foster children were medicated at a rate of 22 percent compared to 8.2 percent for non-foster children in 2008, according to the study.
The GAO found that Florida – along with Texas, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon – “falls short of providing comprehensive oversight as defined by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry” in its oversight of the use of psychotropic drugs.
Also on Thursday, U.S. Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware held a hearing into the disparate rates.
George Sheldon, formerly Florida’s child welfare chief and now a federal official, last week wrote to states, “Enhanced efforts to properly prescribe and monitor psychotropic medication among children in out-of-home care are necessary, appropriate, and urgent.”
In 2009, as secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families, Sheldon presided over an investigation into the suicide of seven-year-old Gabriel Myers, who hanged himself from a shower in Margate; the child had been taking several “black-box” drugs whose side effects include suicidal behavior.
“I am so thankful I was taken off of these types of meds,” said Derrick Riggins, a former Florida foster child who now works at the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute in Washington, D.C. “Kids in foster care don’t need to be over-medicated. They need a loving home.”
In 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will convene state directors of child welfare, Medicaid and mental health services to develop action plans for addressing the issue.
By The News Service Florida
Comments
4 Responses to “Feds Looking At Psych Meds For Foster Kids”
Ma’am when you regain custody of your child, I would suggest leaving Florida. I know it takes resources, so now is the time to be planing and preparing. May the Lord help you.
As a Mother of a son in Escambia county I can testifi to the fact my son is now currently on approximently 5 of those prescribed potent psychotropic drugs. When I tried to take him off of them and get him on holistic medicine the doctors complained and cps got involved . My son went to foster care and they were trying to put him on PROZAC. It is my feeling because I contested this along with other protests against my situation , my parental rights were terminated, My son is now adopted out to another single parent home and has not physchally grown past the apreance of a 9 yr old at the age of 14, my son does not get anymore than a cereal breakfast when he needs a solid breakfast with more calories to make up for his bodies intake of all that medication. I worry about the effects on his liver and kidney’s but I am powerless . I hope the Feds look deeply into this matter of children on medications like this. I know my son has been nothing more than a prisoner to the medical expiermenting of phamacutical drug companies by all apearences. he never goes outside and has sever headaches and is limited social life and no adovocate to oversee his well being . it is a tragedy waitng to happen . Perhaps the feds will look into any and all children whom are on more than 2 medications whom have been in the foster care system and are now adopted in the last 5 yrs . one needs not look far. Concerned Mother and survivor of CPS tyrany
All these psych meds stifle a child’s creativity and individualism..it’s just government trying to create a generation of zoned out people who can’t exist without the hand of government benevolently providing for their support.
All that Ritalin, (dexedrine) is actually a pharmaceutical grade speed, It was made to calm overactive children, not stimulate fishermen running catfish lines all night, or whatever. I wonder how much winds up on the underground market.