The PPJ Gazette – November 3, 2014
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.
A new report issued from the Bay Area News organization, raises the alarm on mass prescribing of dangerous psychotropic drugs to California’s foster care children. Among the findings of the investigation: Nearly 1 out of every 4 adolescents in California foster care system is being drugged, 3 times the rate for adolescents nationwide. Even more alarming is that of the tens of thousands prescribed psychiatric drugs, nearly 60% were prescribed powerful antipsychotics which have been documented by 72 international drug regulatory warnings to cause heart problems, stroke, diabetes, convulsions and sudden death.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a mental health watchdog organization responsible for helping to enact more than 150 reforms against abusive mental health practices, says this treatment of children is medical neglect, and reforms must be enacted to protect this vulnerable population. CCHR has experts in the field of California Foster Care who are available for media interviews, as well as Doctors who can speak to the dangers of the drugs being prescribed to children, not only in foster care, but nation wide.
According to IMS Health, the leading vendor of all US prescribing data, nearly 9 million children currently being prescribed psychiatric drugs—with more than 1 million are under the age of five. Click here for the exact breakdown of age groups being prescribed psychiatric drugs http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/
To read the full report on California’s Foster Care crisis, click here –http://www.cchrint.org/2014/08/26/drugging-our-kids-children-in-californias-foster-care-system/