Drugging Children in California’s Foster Care System

[presence]

http://www.dailynews.com/health/2014...ky-medications

Drugging our kids: Children in California’s foster care system are prescribed risky medications


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By Karen de Sá, Bay Area News Group, kdesa@mercurynews.com
Posted: 08/23/14, 7:40 PM PDT | Updated: 3 days ago






For more coverage, visit http://webspecial.mercurynews.com/druggedkids/.





They are wrenched from abusive homes, uprooted again and again, often with their life’s belongings stuffed into a trash bag.


Abandoned and alone, they are among California’s most powerless children. But instead of providing a stable home and caring family, the state’s foster care system gives them a pill.


With alarming frequency, foster and health care providers are turning to a risky but convenient remedy to control the behavior of thousands of troubled kids: numbing them with psychiatric drugs that are untested on and often not approved for children.



An investigation by this newspaper found that nearly 1 out of every 4 adolescents in California’s foster care system is receiving these drugs — 3 times the rate for all adolescents nationwide. Over the last decade, almost 15 percent of the state’s foster children of all ages were prescribed the medications, known as psychotropics, part of a national treatment trend that is only beginning to receive broad scrutiny.


“We’re experimenting on our children,” said Los Angeles County Judge Michael Nash, who presides over the nation’s largest juvenile court.



A year of interviews with foster youth, caregivers, doctors, researchers and legal advocates uncovered how the largest foster care system in the U.S. has grown dependent on quick-fix, taxpayer-funded, big-profit pharmaceuticals — and how the state has done little to stop it.

Continued

[Origanalist]

Government, destroying families and destroying lives.

[donnay]

Government, destroying families and destroying lives.

That has always been the agenda. Easier to destroy a country that way.

[Origanalist]

That has always been the agenda. Easier to destroy a country that way.

Ya gotta break a few eggs to make a omelet.....

[kcchiefs6465]

Government, destroying families and destroying lives.

Maybe one day I'll post a video of my sister.

Not that you need told, but maybe someone reading this is considering it: don't put your children on drugs.

Side effects are real and are sometimes irreversible.

I hear people casually talking about drugging their kids (routinely) and it makes me sick to my stomach. Not simply foster kids. I don't think people could really imagine the horror that can result.

It's evil.

85 billion a year. I pray there is a hell.