The number offoster children on powerful psychiatric drugs was badly underreported,child-welfare bosses reveal.
The shocking numbers emerging from Florida'sinvestigation into psychiatric intervention in its foster care servicerepresent a virtual pandemic of child drugging.
Nearly thirty percent of teenage Floridafoster children have been prescribed a mental-health drug, and no less than 73foster kids younger than 6 are taking mind-altering drugs, according to a studyreleased on Thursday. In all, 2,669 children of Florida foster children are being givenpowerful psychiatric drugs.
This represents roughly a third more kids than a Department of Children andFamilies (DCF) database had reported as taking mental-health drugs: staterecords had seriously underreported the use of such drugs. Many of the drugsbeing illegally given to kids have never been approved by the Food and DrugAdministration for use on children, and many are linked to serious sideeffects.
Investigation
The figures are the result of an investigation launched in response to thesuicide of a seven year old foster child who was taking such medications. Thechild who took his own life, Gabriel Myers, had been given psychiatric drugs inthe weeks leading up to his suicide. The drugs included anti-depressants thatare linked to a high risk of suicide among children.
In violation of the law, neither Gabriel's parents nor a judge had consentedto the use of such drugs.
''Normally, a 7-year-old boy is learning how to read and tie his shoes,''said the DCF director. "It is incomprehensible to me even now that a childso young may have deliberately and consciously made a decision to end hislife.''
Certainly one can but wonder what kind of distress the boy must have beensuffering and why nothing effective was done to help him and, echoing theoutrage of many observers and concerned citizens, he added that he had''serious questions'' about the use of mental-health drugs on children.
Chemical Restraints
Worse even than the numbers involved in the abuse, are the possible motivesbehind the child drugging.
It has emerged that for almost a decade, Florida child advocates have complained thatmental-health drugs are being used as ''chemical restraints'' to control somefoster kids but their legitimate concerns appear to have been disregarded.
Andrea Moore, a former head of Florida'sChildren First who first suggested child-welfare workers were relying onmental-health drugs to control behavior, said, ''The shift-care workers atgroup homes are much more likely to report sadness and crying as depression, oranxiousness as some sort of mental-health problem,'' Ms Moore said.
Reporting "depression" and thus labeling the child mentally illprovides justification for drugging in an effort to render the child more malleableand, sadly, is in line with the common psychiatric practice of labeling normalhuman behavior an "illness" requiring psychiatric intervention.
But as Ms Moorepointed out: "You'd be sad and anxious, too, if you didn't know where youwere going to live from day to day.''
Can any of us imagine what such a situation must be like for a small andhelpless child? Certainly labeling a normal reaction to a distressing situationas a mental illness and using this as an excuse to drug with particularlydangerous chemicals that can set in train lifelong damage, appears to be theheight not only of irresponsibility but of cruelty too.
It has emerged that caregivers were once told they did not need consents formental-health drugs in certain cases -- meaning there may be significantnumbers of incidences of drugging not listed at all!
Among the 20,235 children whose case files were studied, investigators foundno parental or judicial consent on record for 16 percent of the children, thereport said.
The report produced by the DCF outlines steps administrators will take.
These include:
• State child-welfare lawyers will seek permission to drug their children fromparents who still have authority to make decisions on their children's behalf,or go to court to seek approval from a judge to start drugging.
• Administrators are launching an ''immediate'' review to determine howreliable the state's child-welfare database is. It is not clear to this writerwhat steps will be take to ensure that database becomes one hundred percentaccurate.
• DCF administrators and the heads of private foster-care agenciesthroughout the state will discuss the use of psychiatric drugs by fosterchildren weekly by telephone.
''The purpose of these calls is to ensure effective communication onimprovements that must take place,'' the report said.
It is as yet unclear what precisely will be discussed and whether thediscussion will include valid and highly workable alternatives to drugging orif those involved are even aware that such alternatives exist.
''This report is an important first step in closely examining not only thiscase -- but to help ensure this type of tragedy never happens again,'' the DCFDirector said at a Thursday news conference.
Unfortunately, psychiatric drugs being what they are and having the sideeffects they are known to have, while their use continues there can be noguarantees the tragedy will not happen again.
Concern
There appears to be no news yet as to what will be done about psychiatrists andother care workers who broke the law relating to child drugging.
Equally cause for concern, the undertakings listed above seem to indicate adetermination to go on drugging foster kids as long as the letter of the law isadhered to, whereas the whole concept of psychiatric involvement, particularlyas this invariably means drugging, in the care of children is in urgent need ofa rethink.
Several matters need to be urgently examined:
The scientific validity of the "disorders" or "mentalillnesses" with which children are labeled as an excuse to drug them.
The number of people labeled "mentally ill" who are"cured" by the drugs they are given as opposed to the numbers who aremerely drugged indefinitely without cure.
The number of children thus drugged who develop mental health"complications" including later addiction to street drugs.
The deterioration in performance in areas of life at local, state andnational level, such as education, mental health and drug rehabilitation wherepsychiatry has been allowed to intervene.
The ineffectiveness of drugging in curing anything and its tendency toproduce serious side effects and complications and the connection betweenserious crimes such as murders by youngsters and their medication bypsychiatrists in the period preceding their crimes.
The percentage of drugged children who go on to become criminals atconsiderably exacerbated cost to both society and the state.
Why government is wasting taxpayers dollars on psychiatric methods when theyare rendered outmoded by advances in knowledge of diet, nutrition and medicineis not clear. The state would not waste money on having leeches administered tosick children instead of antibiotics so why does it waste money on equallystone-age treatments for those emotionally troubled?
Whether it would be safer, healthier, kinder and more cost effective tospend money, not on psychiatry, but on ensuring effective nutrition and a safe,caring environment for foster kids.
Future
A race that fails to love and care for its children has abandoned its future.Most of us would like to think we do right by our young and that some kind offuture is being ensured for our civilization.
