California Senate Panel Investigates Drugging of Foster Kids

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The chair of a state Senate committee told a public hearing that California’s foster care system “has grown more addicted to mind-altering medication” and that the state has “done little to act on this alarming issue,” reported San Jose Mercury News. The hearings follow on the heels of a series of news investigations into the extensive use of psychiatric medications in the foster care system.

Will Lightbourne, director of the state’s Department of Social Services, acknowledged “deep concern about the volume” of psychotropic drugs prescribed to foster youth and said the agency had spent two years developing guidelines to reduce their use, reported San Jose Mercury News. But others present asked “why so little has changed since state lawmakers held a hearing nearly a decade ago on the very same issue.”

There are also videos of the hearings.

Senate panel examines why California foster care system ‘addicted’ to psychiatric drugs (San Jose Mercury News, February 24, 2015)

San Jose Mercury News Drugging Our Kids Continuing Coverage (includes hearing video)

9 COMMENTS

  1. “blah blah blah, medication, medication, medication! Well the child DID need ‘medication’, but blah blah blah” I swear to [loud and angry expletives] that the first person to use the word “medication” in this context to me IRL is going to wind up with a broken nose and pumpkin head. I seriously need to stop coming here, my blood pressure cant handle it.

    I mean it’s one thing if it’s some B.S. advocacy group like NAMI. But these are people bringing up the concerns of DRUGGING kids for the convenience of apathetic, overpaid tax-funded state child care workers. Why in the [expletive] would they even CONSIDER using the word “medication” in THAT context!?!?!

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    • I mean just imagine you’re watching a news report about another one of these degenerate parents who knock their kids out so they can play video games, and you hear the news reporter say “and then the police found the child over-medicated with ‘antipsychotic’ and anti-histamine medications… social services and child protective service workers determined that the child had been medicated this way many times before…”

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        • I think the parents went to prison in the case Jeffery’s referring to, but the psychiatrist did not. But did that psychiatrist warn the parents not to give that child antihistamines? She should have:

          Agents with anticholinergic properties (e.g., sedating antihistamines … neuroleptics …) may have additive effects when used in combination. Excessive parasympatholytic effects may result in paralytic ileus, hyperthermia, heat stroke, and the anticholinergic intoxication syndrome. Peripheral symptoms of intoxication commonly include mydriasis, blurred vision, flushed face, fever, dry skin and mucous membranes, tachycardia, urinary retention, and constipation. Central symptoms may include memory loss, disorientation, incoherence, hallucinations, psychosis, delirium, hyperactivity, twitching or jerking movements, stereotypy, and seizures.

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  2. A fire has to be lit under these politicians and bureaucrats. I am surprised that even with mainstream media attention to this issue, nothing changes. The psychiatric abuse of children, like shock treatment, is an issue that resonates with the public. Hmmmmm….I am in California. I suppose I should take some of my own advice.

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  3. The Mercury-News did an amazing series on this. If you haven’t checked it out, you all should:

    http://webspecial.mercurynews.com/druggedkids/

    Karen Sa deserves a Pulitzer for this amazing investigative journalism. Foster kids are the most powerless group of people in this country, and it’s not surprising the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatric profession take profit at their expense. I see it every day, and it breaks my heart.

    — Steve

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    • The videos are interesting, and I’m glad this is finally, hopefully or possibly, being addressed. The psychiatrists apparently chose to be in the business of trying to completely obliterate all victims of abuse and injustice. Perhaps the criminals should be put in jail instead?

      What kind of government supports the already disproven, but continuing, eugenics theories of psychiatry? Oh, one that was controlled by a family that helped to finance the Nazi’s. One that is now seemingly controlled by the “too big to fail,” evil banks our founding fathers warned us about over 200 years ago (google Thomas Jefferson on private banks).

      How long does it take us, as a society, to learn that those currently in charge, should not be? How long does it take us as a society to realize absolute power corrupts absolutely? How long does it take us as a society to realize that true competition is what made the US a great society, and we need to break up all the oligopolistic industries and bring back an actual democratic republic, although one can hope this may happen on a worldwide basis. That’s what I was taught my country had as a goal, but they’ve done the opposite. Those who’ve been in control of the US for the past couple or several decades, and are still currently in control, seemingly don’t have that as their goal.

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  4. So…since we hear so much about all the “undiagnosed” and “untreated” mentally ill in our society, struggling in anonymity, and since foster kids are apparently blessed with being more often diagnosed and treated, doesn’t it follow that foster kids should be, as a group, happier and more mentally healthy than kids in general? Where’s the research on that?

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