Federal Judge Finds Texas Use of Psychotropic Drugs on Foster Children ‘Appalling’

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From KERA News: “A federal judge called Texas’ use of psychotropic drugs on foster children appalling and in violation of the state’s own standards.

Speaking at a Wednesday hearing in the 12-year old federal foster care litigation, Judge Janis Jack said she was saddened by a report filed last month by court monitors on the use of psychotropic drugs in the Texas foster care system.

The report was based on multi-day visits to 14 group homes, or residential treatment facilities.

‘Were you not shocked with this Ms. Muth?’ Jack inquired of new department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Stephanie Muth. ‘The massive amount of drugs that are given to these children just because these group homes really can’t handle the children?’

. . . Karl Neudorfer, an assistant attorney general representing DFPS, said he disagreed with the characterization that the state doesn’t care about the misuse of psychotropic drugs.

Jack fired back: ‘Yes or no,’ does the state believe it is bound by the injunction to monitor and keep kids safe from drug misuse?

He demurred.

‘These children are being repeatedly raped in your care. They’re being drugged in your care if they complain. If their behavior is not up to snuff, they’re getting psychotropic drugs. And that is not safe,’ she said.”

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6 COMMENTS

  1. I am saddened too, similar to the Judge, and relieved that she not only was saddened, she had the clarity to name the problem, to see it as a sequence of negative events which of course impacted on the children. Then she stood by her values regarding the lives of the children, got into their corner and defended them from being victims of a state care system which cares too much about its reputation at the expense of children who are abused, and sometimes abused a few times over.
    I wish there were more justice-motivated judges like her!

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    • I worked for 20 years in the foster care system and the stories are all too familiar. I helped get a law passed to require such evaluations of kids before they were ever put on psych drugs, and with the help of a state-level nurse, we also managed to implement a triggered review of any case involving certain polypharmacy criteria. The drugging rate HAS dropped since then in Oregon, but it’s still way too high. It is the inevitable result of inventing “diseases” that can’t be objectively determined and giving people drugs for them. There will always be “diagnostic creep” if there is no hard line to decide when intervention is needed, as is the case with essentially every psychiatric “disorder.”

      Another interesting fact was that those kids cared for by relatives had a MUCH lower rate of psych drugging than those being fostered by strangers. I have the greatest respect for the many excellent foster parents out there, but think it really helps to have someone in the room with the doctor who feels a familial obligation to care for the child’s needs. It’s way too easy in the current system to believe we are acting in the child’s interests when we’re actually acting to make the adults’ lives easier. That won’t change until we get rid of these bullshit subjective “diagnoses” as excuses to drug kids into compliance or docility.

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  3. Steve says, “It’s way too easy in the current system to believe we are acting in the child’s interests when we’re actually acting to make the adults’ lives easier. That won’t change until we get rid of these bullshit subjective “diagnoses” as excuses to drug kids into compliance or docility.”

    OR as excuses to make professionals feel important whenever they spit out a so-called “diagnoses”.

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  4. Here’s what the “diagnosis” of ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) ACTUALLY means:

    It’s what adults call the kids who are smart enough to know when the adults are full of shit, but unlucky enough to let the adults know.

    And what are the “biological markers” of said “diagnosis”? The adults’ blood pressure shooting up as their faces turn bright red.

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