Psychotropic Drugging of Foster Care Kids

Druggin our kids

I think you will enjoy this article that was just placed on the SJ Mercury News website called “Drugging Our Kids”. It is a great investigative work on foster care kids being prescribed psych drugs!

Here you can see what is occurring in our California’s Foster Care system. I suggest you write to the author and let her know you appreciate her article.

Here’s an excerpt from the article with a link to the entire article:

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.READ MORE

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: Karen de Sá –  kdesa@mercurynews.com

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