More Time in Foster Care Linked to More Psychotropic Medicating

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Children as young as four in foster care are taking three or more psychotropic medications, and the length of time that children aged six or under are being medicated with psychotropics increases two-fold for every year that they live in foster care, according to a study in Psychiatric Services. University of Maryland researchers studied 1,491 foster children aged six and under in a mid-Atlantic city between 2009-11. While other studies have shown that psychotropic medicating of foster children is high, this is the first to examine developments over time in care. “The higher likelihood of using antipsychotic, antidepressant, and ADHD medications for three or more weeks per month with each increase in year of age suggests a trend toward chronic use,” they wrote. “Such use occurred over a very short period of tremendous developmental growth.”

Listing some of the serious side effects and dangers of common psychotropics, the researchers then wrote, “Notwithstanding these risks, few patients receive routine metabolic monitoring in outpatient clinical care.” They further noted that, “Few youths in this study had a psychotherapy visit, not to mention evidence-based treatments,” and concluded, “There is a critical need for long-term studies to evaluate the effect of chronic exposure on children’s health and well-being.”

Age-Related Trends in Psychotropic Medication Use Among Very Young Children in Foster Care (dosReis, Susan et al. Psychiatric Services in Advance, August 1, 2014; doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201300353)

15 COMMENTS

  1. “There is a critical need for long-term studies to evaluate the effect of chronic exposure on children’s health and well-being.”
    I’d say there is a need to stop this madness immediately, not to continue an experiment on human subjects.

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  2. I’m not exactly sure what psychiatric drugs / treatments are approved by the FDA for children, but I guess there are a lot of off-label prescriptions. This is just plain wrong.

    If psychotropic drugs were not harmful for the development of the brain, we could also legalize marijuana, alcohol and nicotine for kids.

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  3. What ? Why ? How ? In fact, WTF ???

    Someone screwed these kids’ lives up – often accidentally, which is why they are in foster care, then the people who are supposed to be rescuing these most vulnerable children in society from their predicament screw them up completely – only this time deliberately. What world is this ?

    Put the perpetrators on neuroleptics, it might stop them doing any more damage. On the other hand, it might make them waltz into the nearest childrens’ home with a semi-automatic.

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  4. Foster kids are subjected to more mental health screening,

    The youngsters are sat down and asked introverting questions such as:

    Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren’t interested in anything?
    Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good-looking or as smart as other people?
    How often did your parents get annoyed or upset with you because of the way you were feeling or acting?
    Have you often felt very nervous when you’ve had to do things in front of people?
    Have you often worried a lot before you were going to play a sport or game or do some other activity?
    Have you thought seriously about killing yourself?
    Have you often thought about killing yourself??
    Have you ever tried to kill yourself?

    Based on the answers the child gives to the above questions and many more like them he or she is then shuffled off to a “clinician”, who ponders the bogus label to use.

    The “clinician” summarizes his or her report and comes up with an “impairment score”.

    Based on how the child answered the “screening”, and which label the clinician may have conjured up and how the child did on his “impairment score” the child is then sent off for “treatment”.

    That’s pretty much how it goes, I might have left out a few things in the proccess but more “screening” equals more treatment- drugging and foster kids get more screening and there we have it.

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    • Let’s go through most this list, from the likely perspective of a child who was so abused by his / her family that (s)he was taken out of it, and put into foster care; and that of a fortunate person, who is working with these children:

      “Has there been a time in your life when nothing was fun for you and you just weren’t interested in anything?”

      Well, I work with “disadvantaged” children who have yet to be taken from their birth families, who have expressed this state of mind. So, it strikes me, that a child who was actually so abused he or she was taken from their parents, by the “state,” would definitely feel this way at “some time in [their] life.”

      “Has their been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you felt you weren’t as good looking or smart as other people?”

      Well, as a person who is of above average intelligence and of above average appearance, but was railroaded by doctors and psychiatrists who wanted to cover up a “bad fix” on a broken bone and medical evidence of the sexual abuse of my child for a religion, via psychiatric misdiagnosis and poisoning. I can say yes, I felt completely mentally and physically abused by doctors who’d promised to “first and foremost, do no harm,” but betrayed and poisoned me instead. What’s good is I’ve since researched the medical evidence, and can prove the medical misdiagnosis and poisoning, and have been told I dealt with the “dirty little secret of the two original educated professions.” But, my point is, a child dealing with abusive parents, as well as all non-psychopaths who answers this question honestly, will answer this question in the affirmative.

      “How often did your parents get annoyed or upset with you because of the way you were feeling or acting?”

      Of course abusive parents will behave in an inappropriate manner. But our “mental health” system blames and tranquilizes the child victims of abusive parents for knowing their parents’ behavior is inappropriate. And, let’s be real, all parents get annoyed by their teenagers, at times, so parents’ being “annoyed or upset” by children’s’ behavior is normal.

      “Have you often felt very nervous for having to do things in front of other people?”

      Well, as someone who has done research on child abuse, and the behavior of pedophiles, it’s my understanding now that pedophiles often share their victims. Wouldn’t anyone feel “very nervous for having to do [grotesquely inappropriate] things in front of other people”? The psychiatric industries’ inquiries are, and historically have been I now understand, intended to cover up sexual abuse of children.

      … “Have you ever thought about killing yourself?”

      As someone who led a “semi-charmed life,” prior to dealing with psychiatric defamation and poisoning for documented unethical reasons, but is supposed to be a “judge” according to 40 hours of unbiased psychological career testing. I will say that I think it is normal for all humans to question their existence. I questioned the concepts of life, death, and life after death when I was a teen. This is normal. And, of course, a child who did not grow up advantaged and loved, as I did, would contemplate death.

      Today’s psychiatric industries’ queries are intended to force abused children onto drugs, to cover up societies’ problems. Our countries’ (the US, although this seems to be a first world nation problem) adaptation of today’s psychiatric eugenics delusions are no more credible than were the Nazi psychiatrists’ eugenics delusions. Except, the psychiatric industry today is more insidious, willfully or due to pharmaceutical industry propaganda that deludes the psychiatric practitioners. Today’s psychiatric drugs, and the practitioners mandating them, are actually creating the serious mental illnesses, in any one it is profitable for them to do so, today.

      I hope and pray for a major change in the system, please.

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  5. My experience from meeting children and youngsters at my work place is that nearly all of them have been given psychiatric diagnosis and prescribed drugs. It did not happen that much ten years ago, but today it is extremely common. All the kids have a kind of reason for coming to us, otherwise we would not have met. But the reason is of course to find in their context, and in their relationships or lack of relations. Instead of focusing on that young people are described as “psychiatric cases” and “treated” with drugs no one know the consequenses of. It is nothing but a big shame, and as I think something all citizens have a responsibilty to not accept. Yes, more resaearch is needed, but also common sense, and to tell about practice. That which many of us experience every day, without talking about it. It is not just psychiatrists, but many of us who have a possibility to contribute and to make a change.

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  6. Is the first mistake in the first sentence where it has the word “medicated,” or before that with “care?”

    Pregnant women and new mothers are likewise targeted in the stratagems of these people for wealth-producing xenobiotic drug sales.

    Children in need of horrific surgery at birth, children dieing the day they are born, young people suddenly committing suicide or homicide, adolescent boys developing lactating female breasts – things such as these are considered by counter intelligence strategists with Psychiatry/Pharma surmountable marketing problems for them to create strategic operations to deal with and control.

    Abram Hoffer, M.D. explains that after Thorazine and its spinoff tranquillizers were so lucrative that the drug companies took over Psychiatry and that is what has happened to Psychiatry. >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE2rpITjlhI

    Judith Rapoport, M.D.
    Dr. Judith Rapoport was Chief of the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health – http://www.braintalkcommunities.org/archives/06_11/showthread.php?t=4043

    Harvard Professors Joseph Biederman, M.D. Timothy Wilens, M.D. Janet Wozniak, M.D.
    Cambridge Pediatric Psychiatry

    Janet Wozniak, M.D. of Harvard, “Criticizing the diagnosis is insulting to clinicians!!”

    >> Furious Seasons Blog — https://web.archive.org/web/20120318225148/http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2007/02/

    Joseph Biederman, M.D. of Harvard, “After me – there is only God.”
    https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Joseph+Biederman+scandal++God

    Senator Charles Grassley Republican of Iowa finds that Joseph Biederman, M.D. and other Leading Psychiatrists at Harvard
    Failed To Reveal $3.2 Million in Pay
    https://www.facebook.com/democracynow/posts/10202835149852088

    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    “Mental disorders are treated separately from physiological or neurological disorders.”
    http://disability.yuku.com/topic/56#.U0dWS1f4LTo

    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    “PSI joins with worldwide advocates for prevention through education, early diagnosis and treatment of maternal mental health distress

    (October 4, 2013) – According to Postpartum Support International (PSI), at least 20% of pregnant and new mothers will experience a maternal mental health disorder, yet most are never screened…”

    Postpartum Support International Press Release October 7, 2013 http://perinatalpro.com/blog

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    “Trolling for Mental Patients in a Maternity Ward Near You.”
    Evelyn Pringle
    https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=+trolling+maternity+evelyn+pringle

    January 27, 2009

    Mothers Act Promotes Pregnancy as New Cottage Industry
    By Evelyn Pringle

    http://mothersact.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/mothers-act-promotes-pregnancy-as-new-cottage-industry-by-evelyn-pringle/

    “Women of childbearing years represent the most lucrative market for the makers of psychiatric drugs. The knowledge that infants were being born with birth defects and suffering a withdrawal syndrome when these drugs were used during pregnancy was hidden for decades. Knowledge of these terrible risks would have caused a major drop in sales to this customer base.”

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