Tag: foster children

D.C. Faces Lawsuit for Unnecessarily Institutionalizing Hundreds of Kids

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From The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law: "The Bazelon Center, along with co-counsel Disability Rights DC at University Legal Services (the protection and advocacy...

Congress Did Something Extraordinary for Vulnerable Children

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From The Intercept: A new piece of legislation attempting to revolutionize the foster care system recently passed despite significant opposition. The Family First Prevention Services...

Foster Youths Meet Psychiatry: First – Do No pHarm

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When a foster youth encounters a Psychiatrist, chances are high that s/he will get medicated. Traumatized foster youth are often prescribed powerful psychotropics due to exhibiting a wide variety of “normal reactions to abnormal events,” such as despair, agitation, anxiety and self-harm. The practice has been well documented; foster children are prescribed psychotropics at a 2.7 to 4.5 times higher rate than non-foster youth. The National Center for Youth Law aptly summarizes the problem as; too many (25% of foster youth medicated), too soon (300 children under the age of 5 in California are given psychotropics annually) too much (adult dosages) and for too long (no planning or reviews for possible discontinuation).

Kudos to Art Levine for Exposing Government Complicity in Illegal Psychiatric...

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In a well-researched, comprehensive article in today's Huffington Post Art Levine has brought to the attention of the mainstream media the government's complicity in the illegal psychiatric drugging of poor children, especially foster children, through Medicaid.  The article, Feds Pay for Drug Fraud: 92 Percent of Foster Care, Poor Kids Prescribed Antipsychotics Get Them for Unaccepted Uses is the only mainstream article I know about that has really pressed the federal government over its refusal to enforce Medicaid's coverage restrictions to "medically accepted indications."

Twelve-year-old Ke’onte Cook Testifies in US Senate Hearing

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A child in the foster-care system tells of his experience being diagnosed and then medicated with psychiatric drugs.