The suicide of a Florida seven-year-oldwhile undergoing psychiatric drugging is being investigated but the case may bethe tip of an illegal drugging iceberg.
In Florida last month a 7 year oldfoster child hanged himself in the bathroom of his Margate foster home. Gabriel Myers was beingtreated by a psychiatrist at the time of his death and was apparently beinggiven a cocktail of dangerous mind-altering drugs.
Psychiatric drugs are linked to suicidal thoughts, depression, rage and alist of adverse and sometimes fatal side effects. This is so much a cause forconcern that the law now requires drug manufacturers to provide warnings as totheir dangers and Floridalaws, designed to protect children from harm from such medications, forbid anychild to be administered psychiatric drugs without parental or judicialapproval.
In Gabriel's case no such approval was obtained and, if true, this wouldplace his psychiatrist in breach of the law. Gabriel's suicide while onpsychiatric medication and given the side effects of such medication suggeststhat the medication itself could have played a part in the little boy's impulseto take his own life. At the very least his treatment was ineffective inhelping him overcome whatever difficulties he may have been experiencing..
A senior Floridalawmaker who chairs a state Senate committee on children is so concerned thatshe has asked two state agencies to investigate the psychiatrist who treatedGabriel
In separate letters to the Florida Board of Medicine and the Agency forHealth Care Administration (AHCA), state Sen. Ronda R.Storms, a BrandonRepublican who chairs the Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee,requested an investigation leading to a ``full report.''
Gabriel ‘s death spurred Department of Children and Families SecretaryGeorge Sheldon to appoint a work group to study the agency's use of psychiatricdrugs and its compliance with a 2005 law on the use of such medications onchildren in state care.
''In my view, this case raised serious concerns which demand attention andanswers,'' Senator Storms wrote in a May 1 letter to AHCA Secretary HollyBenson.
AHCA runs a state program that monitors the prescribing of mental-healthdrugs to children, the Medicaid Drug Therapy Management Program. The programtracks the prescribing of mental-health drugs to children, and flagspsychiatrists with a high volume of prescriptions of mental-health drugs orpotentially dangerous combinations of the medication.
The program scrutinizes the practices of about 17,000 doctors who prescribemedications to children on Medicaid, and about 300 to 450 end up red-flagged.
Dr. Sohail Punjwani, the psychiatrist who was treating Gabriel, had beenred-flagged by the medication program every quarter that the list was kept,according to one administrator, .reports The Miami Herald. Surprisingly,considering such a worrying track record, Eulinda Smith, a spokeswoman for thestate Department of Health reports that Punjwani has not been disciplinedbefore by the Board of Medicine
Senator Storms wanted to know what AHCA was doing to monitor the activitiesof doctors whose prescribing practices were identified as ``problematic'' andasked, ''What guidelines or repercussions for red-flagged physicians are inplace to prevent practices that result in a loss of life? What actions,legislative remedies or otherwise, should be taken which would provide thecitizens of our state a greater level of protection?''
Spokespersons for both state agencies declined to discuss the requests byStorms but Ms Smith confirmed ''It's very serious when we get a head's-up froma legislator, That would prompt us to begin the disciplinary process.''
What is emerging now is an indication that it may have been common practicefor psychiatric drugs to have been used on foster kids without the parental orjudicial consent required by law. In other words, illegal drugging of youngchildren may have been commonplace in the Florida foster care system.
In an effort to sidestep laws put in place to protect children, some doctorswere prescribing powerful psychiatric medications to treat"non-psychiatric" issues. For example, if the antipsychotic drugZyprexa was used on a foster child for "bed wetting" or some othernon-psychiatric purpose - no consent from a parent was obtained.
Therefore, the state did not include these drugs when adding up the numberof kids in foster care on psychiatric drugs. Therefore, the count of how manychildren are being drugged may have been considerably under-reported.
Just how many psychiatrists were involved in the illegal child-drugging isnot yet clear.
More than 20,000 case files of foster children in Florida are under review in the wake ofGabriel's death. Just under 10 percent of these children - 1,954 - were listedas being on mood-altering drugs, said John Cooper, the DCF's acting assistantsecretary for operations.
That number is excessive enough considering the age of the children, thedevastating side effects the drugs can have and the way psychiatric drugginginvariably sets in train a mental and physical deterioration of the victim butit will rise markedly when DCF releases the findings of its current study nextweek. "I don't know by how much, but it will be significant," Coopersaid.
In Gabriel's case, he was listed in the database as being prescribed Adderall,an attention deficit/hyperactivity drug but two others, which Gabriel wastaking when he died (Symbyax and Vyvanse) had not been approved by either hisparents or a judge - and this is a violation of state law.
DCF Director Sheldon, has said he wants every aspect of Gabriel's caseinvestigated and people held accountable.
