Like Candy? Foster Kids Get More Antipsychotics
15 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // November 21st, 2011 // 10:32 am
In the latest reason for concern about prescribing antipsychotics for children, a study finds that foster kids are being prescribed combinations of antipsychotics just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid. And the findings underscore a growing trend to prescribe these meds, which are approved only for schizophrenia and bipolard disorder, for any psychiatric issue.
The study, which was published in Pediatrics, found that about 2 percent of foster kids were given at least one antipsychotic, even though schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are very rare in young children. The findings resemble a recent report that kids in Florida’s state-run jails and residential homes are regularly given large doses of the meds but not for approved uses (see this).
The study in Pediatrics analyzed Medicaid records from 2003 of nearly 638,000 children from a mid-Atlantic state who were either in foster care, getting disability benefits for a diagnosis like severe autism or bipolar disorder, or in a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The upshot: nearly 17,000, or 3 percentl, had received at least one prescription for an antipsychotic (read the abstract).
Moreover, 9.2 percent of the foster children more often received a prescription for more than one med at the same time, compared with 6.8 percent among those on disability and 2.5 percent of those in the needy families program, The New York Times notes.
This is apparently the first study to look at the frequency with which foster children are prescribed antipsychotics, the researchers tell the paper. These meds, by the way, include Risperdal, which is sold by Johnson & Johnson; Zyprexa, which is sold by Eli Lilly; and Seroquel, which is sold by AstraZeneca. The drugs are known to increase the risk of diabetes and weight gain, and the drugmakers have faced expansive litigation and government probes over charges they did not adequately disclose the risks (see here, here and here).
“The kids in foster care may come from bad homes, but they do not have the sort of complex medical issues that those in the disabled population do,” Susan dosReis, an associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the lead author, tells the paper. “We simply don’t have evidence to support this kind of use, especially in young children,”
dbunker
I suspect we’ve Program Directors and Socialist workers busy tallying up the Bounty $ they’ll get for “Special or Disabled’ children who are busy dragging in Quacks to ‘diagnose’ them.
I’ve hit this before, I’ll hit it again.
Antipsychotics cause Brain Damage, and slugging these children, or Anyone Else with them is a slam dunk violation of that person’s 8th Amendment Rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
http://psychrights.org/states/alaska/CaseXX/3AN-08-493PS/JacksonOnNLtoxicity.pdf
Duane Sherry
This is child abuse.
Plain and simple. -
http://breggin.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38
A note to the monsters who call themselves “doctors” who prescribe this crap to kids:
“CUT IT OUT!”
Duane
original industry insider
3% of children nine years old or less regularly receive off label Seroquel in the general population according to a Medicaid database. The 2% incidence in foster children therefore don’t represent any special subpopulation based on the data.
http://pharmacy.oregonstate.edu/drug_policy/pages/dur_board/evaluations/articles/Seroquel_DUE.pdf
AnnePME
Susan dosReis and the journal Pediatrics have done us all a great service by exposing this to all of us.Oh, and I can’r forget to thank Ed S. for posting about it.
MsPiggy
“3% of children nine years old or less regularly receive off label Seroquel in the general population according to a Medicaid database.”
I hope everyone can see the problem in drugging 3% of poor nine year old and under children with powerful anti-psychotic drugs like Seroquel, which carry devastating side effect profiles & live long complications with their use (especially in children).
This isn’t just bad medicine, this is a targeted criminal action being taken against children. This goes way beyond shameful…we now know the consequences, there are no more pathetic excuses or pleading ignornace, and yet this absolute insanity continues…
SusanOR
“And the findings underscore a growing trend to prescribe these meds, which are approved only for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for any psychiatric issue.”
Focus on “for any psychiatric issue” — not all behaviors are psychiatric issues unless we label them as such. The psychiatric/biologic reductionism discounts that kids act bonkers when they live in bonkers situations (which is, presumably, why they ended up in the foster care system, and let us not presume that all foster care situations are equal — some situations are particularly destabilizing to the children).
But in the psychiatric/biologic reductionism — if a kid has any symptoms, MUST. PRESCRIBE. MEDICATION. …. rather than actually teaching kids something, giving them behavioral alternatives…Oh, right: we have a two-tiered system in this country. Psychiatrists: covered by Medicaid. Licensed child psychologists and licensed child therapists: not covered because it costs too much. Unlicensed “counselors” - oh, those are covered but many of them are not qualified (by training) to handle anything but normal developmental variation. And then we send them the kids who have had the most non-normal developmental paths because they have had non-normal family situations.
Linda
In the chapter “Blueprints for Reform” of Robert Whitaker’s book “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, which details successes using low to no-psych. drug approaches for “mental health” issues, there is a residential facility for “highly difficult” children in California described. Almost all of the children come there on some sort of psych. drug polypharmacy or other. All are helped to withdraw. Weaned off, and with the right sort of support - which includes counselling - all the children are able to go to a lower and less restrictive level of care.
Why on Earth did Dr. Thomas McLaughren - who heads up the psych. drug section of the FDA, overrule the panel of doctors who ALL voted NOT to approve atypical antipsychotics for children? The floodgates opened, and we see what is happening here in the “Land of the Free.” Someday, there will be history books describing this terrible, dark period in America medicine. It is a criminal activity as well as a lethal one.
Duane Sherry
Linda,
Re: Your comment:
“Someday, there will be history books describing this terrible, dark period in America medicine. It is a criminal activity as well as a lethal one.”
Amen.
Duane
Elmore
I wish somebody would clarify the numbers–3% got a prescription for at least 1 but 9% got a prescription of multiple drugs?
dzieczko
@Duane - it’s already in the history books - agreed its going down as a dark period in America - most obvious is how *medicine* got corrupted and still it does not move the needle to put a stop to it.
What the heck happened to the human species, eh? Something medicine probably can’t cure.
Maria
Terrifying facts! This is child abuse!
the zorro of psychiatry
Nancy Andreason already published what anti-psychotics to the brain - shrink it.
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/68/2/128
original industry insider
Zorrow, there are significant variation in brain volumes in humans that have not been treated with anything. For example, healthy men have 10% more brain volume than women without any apparent differences in higher cortical functions. Unless volumetric changes associated with neuroleptic use are accompanied by anatomic changes (which they are not), then Andreason’s findings have little importance.
dzieczko
Right, the 10% additional brain volume did not go to higher cortical functions. Got data on which parts of the brain got the additional volume?
This story is picked up again today….
john
I can’t speak to the situation today, but but I did some foster care many years ago and spent a lot of time with 20+ year foster parenting veterans. The kids in the system were for the most part not just “regular kids” who happened to be between homes. They were seriously traumatized by sexual and other forms of abuse, neglect, and by the total lack of stability and long term bonding caused by constant shuttling between the birth family and foster care as the state tried to preserve the birth family at almost any cost.
Psychotropic drugs are a blunt instrument that no caring person is going to use casually in children. But sometimes the problems are so severe, you have to use the tools that are available.
I know from the comments above that most of the people on this site strongly disagree with this statement. But I think it might be reasonable for those who have no experience working with foster children to be careful in judging those who have made the commitment and sacrifice to get into the trenches and actually work with the kids.