Want foster kids to behave? Give them harsh tranquilizers developed for schizophrenic patients!
According to a shocking new study published in the journal Pediatrics, foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychotic drugs, even if they’re not mentally ill and they don’t have any psychiatric symptoms. In fact, they’re given the drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid.
Kids in foster care with behavior problems are being given two antipsychotic drugs at once, according to the study. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel, and Zyprexa (and if you want to see something terrifying, just look at the list of Zyprexa’s side effects!). The drugs were developed for schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. But schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are extremely rare in young children, and the foster children in question did not have any psychiatric symptoms. They just came from bad homes.
Note that these drugs were never tested on young people during the FDA trials—and certainly not on people with developing brains. The latest research says the brain is still developing into one’s 20s. Foster care ends at age 18.
The New York Times reports that doctors and policy-makers have, in recent years, grown concerned about high rates of overall psychiatric drug use in the foster care system, the government-financed program that provides temporary living arrangements for 400,000 to 500,000 children and adolescents. Previous studies have found that children in foster care receive psychiatric medications about twice as often as kids outside the system.
The new study focused on one of the most powerful classes of drugs, antipsychotics, which are increasingly being used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.
These same drugs are being used on veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries—when instead, as we have reported previously, they should be treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Antipsychotic drugs are responsible for many of the suicides among our soldiers. In fact, medications were involved in one-third of the record 162 suicides by active-duty soldiers in 2009. These drugs are extremely difficult to stop, because withdrawal often causes psychotic breaks. (That’s right, antipsychotic drugs can cause psychotic breaks.)
And these are the drugs we’re giving troubled children who were removed from bad homes!
Even if the antipsychotic drugs don’t cause the very mental disorders they’re supposed to help or produce the most frightening side effects, the study authors said that the drugs cause rapid weight gain and increase the risk for metabolic problems in many people, an effect that may be amplified by the use of two at once. Diabetes and obesity are the greatest health hazards children are facing—and these are the drugs we’re giving them?
It’s one thing for adults to rely on pills to cure their own ills. But giving kids from broken homes powerful psychotropic drugs just to keep them compliant is unconscionable.
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get real these antipsychotitic drugs are nothing but mind control period period very simple they are one of the few things that should be banned.period.they are 666 the mark of the beast the devil stay away from them and do not make others take them.
Anit-“psychotic” drugs are more about suppressing people than restoring people to sanity. They make it easier to control people in repressive institutions. They are not given to people to help them. These drugs can damage the developing brains of children, and this could cause additional problems in the long run and worsen some already-existing problems. Psychiatric “diagnosis” is subjective, and people may be labeled more for the “convenience” or because of the biases of people doing the labeling. A dissident psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz(www.szasz.com), himself stated that “mental illness” is more socially constructed than real.
Because these drugs suppress dopamine, they can increase the risk of depression. Dopamine is actually a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure. Forcing people to take these drugs could likely worsen, if not cause, depression and this could increase the risk of suicide.
My first job as an RN was in a children’s “hospital”,
really an institution where some children had no
responsible parent in the background. Psych meds
were given to all. That was 1996.
I do some energy medicine now.
There are plans here where I live to put the largest
coal power plant in the state across the street from
a school to blast everyone with mercury and more.
I’ve changed but the toxic realities haven’t – only
the brand names. Linda inVirginia
These kids don’t need drugs. They just good and healthy organic food without pesticides, GMOs, that is home made, gluten and dairy free as well as limited grains, no sugar except a couple pieces of fresh, organic fruit each day. They also need love and affection and someone to listen to them.
This is abusive we must stop this uncivil acts.
There is a massive problem with foster care, partly due to the economy of our country. If the paretns cannot make an adequate living it is hard to docus on their children. We desparately need new rleaders in our country that can increase the opportunity for jobs in our country. Unfortunately, the indifvidual that suffers are the children who end up in foster care, which does not care for the children appropriately. The epidemic of foster children in the US is appauling. Warren Buffet says that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary! He wants to increase the rate of taxes for individuals who have large amounts of money. If children have to resort to foster care, they should be taken care of with love and respect and not given dangerouse drugs that could jeaopardize their lives.
It has been said that whoever goes to see a paychiatrist should have his head exanmined. True! The shrink industry, in concert with Big Pharma, now has 365 listed “disorders”, each linked to a drug, of course, Now is responsible for the greatest single type of Prescripion drugs sold..What could be more obvious?
If these kids didn’t have enough problems already they soon will. What are the long term effects?
Sad but true! I myself was raised in foster care. They have been doing this for the past 20 years.my brother died at 20, the only drugs in his system were anti psychotics, which should have been “alright” dosage according to the coroner. Well it wasn’t alright
Agreed! This stuff is scarey indeed. The medical world appears to have gone mad.
This is so sad. These children didn’t ask to be born, much less to unloving parents or drug abusers or whatever their issues are that don’t allow for them to care for their children. To put them on these dangerous drugs is absolutely abuse!! I can not imagine what the outcome for them is going to be as adults. It would seem even more unlikely that they will be able to find a forever home because once the adults who want to help them do come along and they are told about the child’s need to take psychiatric drugs I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided not to help the child after all. These kids will eventually grow up (hopefully) if they don’t commit suicide first. The reasons some of these kids are in foster homes is because they come from broken homes, it is not because they themselves are broken, yet. That is what is being done to them right now though. I’m not sure if they are receiving any kind of counseling but I’m sure that with the right licensed counselor helping these kids cope with their lives in productive ways they would get more positive results then by drugging them. It’s really not fair and I don’t understand why it is even allowed. I also wonder if the kids can sue the people who are allowing this injustice. These kids are being poisoned by the very people who are suppose to be helping them.
Here in Bullhead City, AZ, psychiatrist, Mohammed Ramadan, has been advertising the past year for research subjects(children) with behavioral problems to be offered free treatment with the drug Serquel. Web search reveals, several years prior, he received $25,000.00 from Astra Zeneca, maker of the drug. Our small town is just an example of the far reaching influence of the ‘medical industrial complex’.
These kids need more than good food and love. Many suffer from RAD – reactive attachment disorder – and PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. How do you think you’d feel if you’d been abused in unspeakable ways, neglected, and/or torn from your birth family? See, even tho these kids have been abused by their own parents and others, they still love them and want to be with them. When these kids are just little ones, they don’t understand what’s going on… even when they’re older they don’t get it! They develop ‘survival skills’ to try to protect themselves, but often times these ‘skills’ are the behaviors that are labeled ‘bad.’ Then comes along some supposed ‘professional’ who prescribes the drugs!
What these kids need is attachment therapy. Not everyday talk therapy, but specialized attachment therapy. Attachment therapy is surely a drug-free therapy. It’s approach is very structured and those children who have had the benefit of attachment therapy do much better than their counterparts who have not. But talk about a monopoly! Insurance companies will not cover attachment therapy (controversal due to the wrong people doing it and some sad outcomes) and it’s very expensive. Believe me, it’s not the rich who are offering to foster or adopt these kids (altho some do, yes)!!! Part of the therapy does include good nutrition (wheat and dairy free, etc) because these specialized therapists have recognized the need to ‘treat’ the whole person. But it takes the right person with specialized training and a heart for these kids who need lots of help – but not drugs!!!!!
Perhaps the worst aspect of this travesty is hidden by propaganda: A great many of the children placed in foster homes aren’t from “broken” homes at all.
Thanks to well-meaning but ill-considered legislation, CPS has unchecked power to take children from whomever it pleases, not because it has to, but because it can. More often than not, their parents are not guilty of abuse or neglect, but of poverty and social unorthodoxy; in particular, the agency enforces an institutional prejudice against home-schooling, particularly by parents who have little money and can’t easily defend themselves.
It is therefore not uncommon for healthy, happy, well-educated kids to be placed under the control of strangers who care not for them, but for the money (which can be substantial) that they can get for housing them. The results are predictable, particularly to anyone who’s read something of the history of such arrangements over the past two centuries.
Child “protection” and foster “care” have become lucrative industries operated by people of no conscience who can wield absolute power to disrupt and destroy lives for profit. Until the CPS/foster family public-relations machine loses its power to sway uninformed opinion, and new laws replace the horrific farrago now in place, this will only get worse.
Some kids can be incredibly upset but drugs are not the answer, calm gentle caring will do more than any drug. Robert Whitaker’s excellent book Anatomy of an Epidemic should be read and shared, drugs have long term negative effects, it’s all in suppressed and ignored science that he brings out in the book, people recover and never backtrack if not drugged, people drugged have “remission” and become life long “consumers” and are miserable most of their whole lives. The taxpayer picks up the tab while vultures get paid to slowly damage our loved ones and innocents.
in japan doctor use same drug ,,,,mental disease
lispadarl , luran,,,,
and i must take such drugs
my brain is ill
i dislike drugs
and if i figth,, i may be in hospital several month
the fact is severe
My friend was on resperdol for 10 yrs for nightmares. In her younger days she was a basketball star. She stood 6’1″. She got up one morning, found herself severly bent, leaning to the left (in a non political way) and stood 5’1″ tall. Her ribcage had collapsed down onto her pelvic bone. Who knows how far it would have dropped had the pelvic bone not been there to stop it. Eventually she was diagnosed with sudden onset scholiosis (spelling) and distonia (spelling) as a direct result of being on Resperdol. She has been wanting to share this side effect with the public and warn evryone as in any and all side effects listed this is never mentioned. Go figure, anyway if you google or bing Johnson and Johnson get sued over Resperdol you can find the 10 or 11 states that have already won lawsuits against them to the tune of millions, or more.
Define Better says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7rACI-WJEw
I am absolutly outraged by this qruel and abusive acts ! this is unessisary and must stop now! we must do all in our power to stop this.
I must say that this article rings true. I do respite care for foster kids and see the same rotation of kids who are just with me on weekends. I look at the amount and types of medications and am appalled. Some of these kids seem coma-like. Seroquel is often In their daily cocktail of meds and I’m no doctor but is it really necessary? All I can do for now is wonder. I will try and do more research and see if I can make at least a small difference.
Any person that gives or has a kid prescribed drugs beause he asks his foster parents questions that they don’t like should be beat down & then sentenced to 25 to life.
i am a former special education teacher who worked with children with behavior handicaps. it was shocking and very grieving to see how many of our young, elementary age school children were routinely prescibed anti psyhotic medicine like risperdol, abililfy, and zyprexia- to name a few. this, in conjuction with mood stabilizers, stimulants for adhd, and anti-depressants. a typical child’s medication profile routinely consisted of 4-5 pscyhtropic drugs- given in adult dosages. can anyone justify this horrendous practice.