COMMENTARY | I always suspected that the government wasn't too spectacular at parenting children. But a November 30 report by ABC News shows that when it comes to protecting the foster children in their care, the government is spectacularly failing.
According to the report, a yearlong investigation by the Government Accountability Office has revealed that the government is not doing enough to oversee the treatment of foster children with powerful psychotropic drugs. The study of five states including Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Texas shows children in the states' care receiving psychiatric medications at doses higher than the maximum levels approved by the FDA, with many children being prescribed multiple medications simultaneously. Additionally, the prescriptions of these drugs were occurring five times higher for foster children than non-fostered ones, with one third of the foster child population one at least one psychiatric drug.
Time Healthland, in its own report on the matter, stated that one quarter of children in foster care who receive disability benefits take these drugs. Though many children in the foster system do have psychiatric illnesses and behavioral issues brought about by a pattern of abuse and neglect, the major manufacturers have all been fined by the FDA for illegal marketing strategies that include marketing psychiatric drugs for unapproved use in children. There is not yet a clear picture as to what the long term impacts of this medication will be on these children.
Dr. Bruce Perry, founder of ChildTrauma Academy, says that there are many non-pharmacological interventions that have proven effectiveness in treating psychiatrically ill children. However, he says, "No one is spending billions to push them."
I am inclined to agree with his assessment, and further inclined to say that this is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately. We live in a society where children are taken away from abusive parents only to be further abused by the system. Where they're quietly turned into test cases for the drug companies. Where they're used in the process of illegal marketing strategies not to help the children themselves, but to help companies help themselves. This, we allow. And we should all be ashamed.
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