Lawmakers call for end to reckless prescribing of psych meds to California foster kids
Some of the state’s most influential lawmakers on Monday called on California’s foster care system to stop the reckless prescribing of psychiatric medications to troubled children, demanding the state quit spending tens of millions of tax dollars on such risky therapies.
The demand for action comes a day after this newspaper published “Drugging our Kids,” an investigation that found nearly one in four adolescents in the nation’s largest child welfare system is prescribed at least one psych med — 3 1/2 times the rate of all teens.
Almost 60 percent of foster youth prescribed psychotropics in California are being given antipsychotics, the most dangerous and expensive class of the drugs, which can result in rapid-onset obesity, diabetes and uncontrollable tremors. Lawmakers expressed outrage over the newspaper’s findings that many of the medications are prescribed for behavior management — not the mental illnesses they are approved to treat — and have little, if any, science supporting their safety and effectiveness in children.
“It’s easier to take care of a sleeping kid, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right,” State Sen. President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said in an interview Monday. “And it certainly doesn’t mean that it’s in the best interest of the child — it’s obvious that in so many instances, it’s not.”
Steinberg said he was deeply concerned about the newspaper’s finding that the state spends more on psychiatric drugs for foster children than on any other type of drug. An analysis of 10 years of Medi-Cal data showed psych meds accounted for 72 percent of spending on the 10 most expensive drug groups for foster children, topping $226 million.
Steinberg said that wide-open spigot, fueled by pharmaceutical company marketing, has to be restricted. READ MORE
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