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One in Four Youth in US Child Welfare System Prescribed Psychiatric Drugs, Three Times the Rate for Others, Government Says

Monday, September 18th, 2023

Study is latest to find that children traumatized by removal from their families and homes are prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs at high rates.

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, August 30, 2023 — A new government study has found that one in four Medicaid-enrolled children under the age of 18 in the U.S. child welfare system is prescribed one or more powerful psychotropic drugs, a rate three times higher than for other Medicaid-enrolled children. They are also prescribed multiple psychotropic drugs at a four times higher rate. The researchers conducting the study cited concern that although the safety and effectiveness of psychotropic drugs have not been clearly established for young people, the drugs are prescribed to these vulnerable youth at high rates.

Staff at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services accessed the 2019 medical records of Medicaid-enrolled children ages 3 to 17, analyzing data from the 719,908 children who were in the child welfare system (receiving foster care, guardianship care, or adoption assistance) compared to the 31,472,608 who were not in child welfare.

The results of the study revealed that youth on Medicaid in the child welfare system were given psychotropic drugs at a rate three times higher than for other youth on Medicaid, with half of the child welfare youth prescribed two or more psychotropic drugs (polypharmacy), a rate four times higher than for other youth. The most common psychotropic drug classes prescribed were stimulants (ADHD drugs), antidepressants, and antipsychotics.

“Of youths in the child welfare group, 26.25% had been prescribed a psychotropic medication and 13.27% experienced psychotropic polypharmacy compared with 9.06% and 3.11%, respectively, of other Medicaid-enrolled youth,” according to the research results published online in JAMA Pediatrics.

The researchers observed that higher rates of psychotropic drugging for youth in the child welfare system were found at all ages, but especially for adolescents ages 12-17, among whom one in three (34%) were on psychotropic drugs, half (19%) of whom were prescribed two or more, with these rates roughly two and four times higher, respectively, than for other Medicaid youth.

“High rates of psychotropic prescription are concerning because of the limited safety and efficacy data for individuals younger than 18 years,” wrote lead author Laura F. Radel, MPP, noting also that there are “safety concerns and uncertainties about these medications’ long-term effects on brain development and metabolic adverse effects.”

Another recent study found a high rate of psychotropic prescribing for foster children. The analysis of medical records for foster children in a region of Texas found that 35% of these youth were prescribed one or more psychotropic drugs, a rate four times the rate for non-foster children (8%).

hese studies come at a time of renewed scrutiny over the disproportionate prescribing of psychotropic drugs to children and teens in the foster care system. Psychotropic drugs expose these young people to the risk of having to deal with the disruption in their lives while also contending with drug side effects. Some of the most serious adverse effects are significant weight gain, diabetes, uncontrollable restlessness (akathisia), uncontrollable muscle movements (tardive dyskinesia), heart problems, mania, violence, and suicidal thoughts and actions.

A 2015 investigation in five states by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) found “serious quality-of-care concerns in the treatment of children with psychotropic medications” in 67% of the Medicaid claims it reviewed. It found hundreds of children were prescribed five or more psychotropic drugs without any scientific evidence to support the regimen, or were prescribed drugs in doses higher than approved maximum levels. Children under the age of 1 were also prescribed psychotropic drugs, which the OIG said “have no established use for mental health conditions in infants and could result in serious adverse effects.” The OIG report faulted states for their insufficient oversight of psychotropic prescriptions for foster children.

A subsequent OIG investigation in 2018 found that one in three foster children (34%) were prescribed psychiatric drugs without the treatment plans or follow-up that the states are required to provide. The OIG report recommended more federal involvement to improve compliance and strengthen state requirements to “help protect children who are at risk for inappropriate treatment and inappropriate prescribing practices.”

The newly released studies show that the overdrugging of foster children and other children in the U.S. child welfare system continues. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) urgently calls on state and federal governments to act to protect children in the child welfare system from the ongoing overprescribing of psychotropic drugs and the serious physical and mental health risks the drugs pose for these children.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of a psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

Tags:Child Drugging, Foster Children, Medicaid
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Foster Children Prescribed Psychiatric Drugs At Four Times the Rate of Non-Foster Children, New Study Finds

Monday, September 4th, 2023

Previous government recommendations for improved oversight of psychotropics in foster care have not resolved the overdrugging problem.

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, August 24, 2023 — Despite government recommendations over more than a decade for more oversight of the psychotropic drugs given to foster children, a new study reveals that the powerful, mind-altering drugs are still disproportionately prescribed to these children as compared to non-foster youth.

Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, reviewed the Medicaid prescription claims of 397,340 children ages 1 to 18 to investigate the rates of psychotropic drug prescriptions for foster children as compared to youth not in foster care. Psychotropic drugs include antidepressants, antipsychotics, stimulants (ADHD drugs), antianxiety drugs, and mood stabilizers.

They found that foster children were prescribed at least one psychotropic drug at four times the rate (35%) of non-foster children (8%).

“Across all age groups, children in foster care on Medicaid were prescribed psychotropic medications disproportionately more than their non-foster peers on Medicaid,” concluded lead author Rachael J. Keefe, MD, MPH, FAAP, a pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics-public health, writing in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology.

The study comes at a time of renewed scrutiny of the amount of psychotropic drugs administered to children in the foster care system. These are children already traumatized by being removed from their homes, where they may have been abused or neglected. Giving them psychotropic drugs exposes them to the risk of having to also deal with drug side effects, some of the most serious of which are significant weight gain, uncontrollable restlessness (akathisia), uncontrollable muscle movements (tardive dyskinesia), heart problems, mania, violence, and suicidal thoughts and actions.

In April, a federal judge in Texas said he was appalled at “the massive amount of drugs that are given to these [foster] children” in psychiatric residential treatment facilities and expressed concern for the children’s safety. The judge was responding to a report on visits to 14 facilities housing foster children, which also showed a lack of proper monitoring of children taking the drugs.

Earlier this year, a federal class-action lawsuit was filed by several disability and civil rights organizations against the Maryland Department of Human Services and its Social Services Administration, alleging that up to 34% of Maryland foster children are prescribed psychotropic drugs, with over half of them prescribed more than one drug. The suit suggests that the drugs are being used on some children as a form of chemical restraint, according to a media report.

More than a decade ago, after an analysis of psychotropic drug use by Medicaid children in five states, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report in 2011 finding that foster children were prescribed psychotropic drugs at double to quadruple the rate of non-foster children. The GAO further found that hundreds of children were taking five or more psychotropic drugs, and thousands were prescribed doses higher than maximum levels recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The GAO recommended government guidance be provided to increase oversight and protections for these children.

A seminal series of articles in 2014 in the San Jose Mercury News brought national attention to the problem again, detailing the high rate of psychotropic prescriptions continuing for children in the California foster care system.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) investigated claims for antipsychotics, a large class of psychotropic drugs, paid for by Medicaid, the health provider for most foster children. Its 2015 report included findings of too many drugs or wrong doses being prescribed and poor monitoring of the children taking the drugs. The OIG recommended enhanced government oversight and reviews of psychotropics prescribed to children.

The OIG issued another report three years later, revealing that one in three children in foster care receiving psychotropic drugs did not receive required treatment planning or medication monitoring. The OIG again recommended better government oversight of psychotropic prescriptions.

Now, the new Texas study shows that the overdrugging of foster children is still occurring. Government recommendations for improved oversight to date have not resolved the problem.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights urgently calls on state and federal governments to act to protect foster children from the massive overprescribing of psychotropic drugs and the physical and mental health risks the drugs carry.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of a psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and behavioral symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

Tags:Child Drugging, FDA, Foster Children, Medicaid, Psych Drugs, Side Effects
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Putting Profit Above Children’s Lives

Monday, August 30th, 2021

The child mental health industry is a system that puts profit above children’s lives, preying on unsuspecting parents and taking advantage of disadvantaged children, such as those covered under Medicaid (state and federal health coverage for lower income families and those with disabilities). It is rife with abuse, yet this hugely profitable industry is rarely held to account for its rampant abuse of our most vulnerable—children.

It is an industry which milks the foster care system for huge profit, where children are four times more likely to be given mind-altering psychotropic drugs than non-foster care children, and much more likely to be prescribed cocktails of these drugs.

It is an industry that electroshocks children including babies, using state funds for lower income families (Medicaid).

It is a business masquerading as healthcare which sells parents and legislators on the idea of helping troubled children. Yet this help is more often simply incarcerating children in behavioral schools or psychiatric wards, where treatment consists of psychiatric drug cocktails, degradation, solitary confinement, and brutal restraint procedures which have killed children. And all of this is done under the guise of helping children.

The abuse is not limited to one chain of psychiatric facilities or one mode of psychiatric behavioral “treatment.” This abuse in the child mental health industry is systemic—yet unknown to most of the public.

For example: Information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveals that 19 states are currently administering electroshock to children, with 7 of those states electroshocking children aged 0-5 years old. These are all children being electroshocked while psychiatrists and facilities bill Medicaid for their “treatment.”

Yet another example — Only one month after the world witnessed the tragic death of George Floyd, unable to breathe as he was physically restrained and held to the ground, 16-year-old Cornelius Frederick, an African American, was physically restrained at Sequel Youth & Family Services’ facility in Michigan, and also cried out, “I can’t breathe!” before passing out. Thirty hours later, on May 1, 2020, he was dead. Cornelius had gone into cardiac arrest while being restrained by Lakeside Academy staff, a residential psychiatric facility that treated foster care and other kids with behavioral issues. A witness to Cornelius’s restraint said, “[T]his kid threw a sandwich. He was being unruly and they couldn’t control him. So, four guys…the size of rugby players tackled him.”

Cornelius is not alone; countless children have suffocated and died after being subjected to deadly restraints within these psychiatric facilities and behavioral treatment centers.

This is not healthcare. This is child abuse. And it is just the tip of the iceberg.

Please help us to support the cause and end the abuse of children in the psychiatric industry. We are making incredible progress, as many of the psychiatric facilities abusing these children are now under investigation. And many state legislators want to put an end to this abuse. There is more to be done, and so we ask you to continue to support our Fight For Kids campaign. Please support the cause and also watch our latest video here.

For more information, visit our Child Psychiatric Treatment page here.

Tags:Abuse, Child Drugging, ECT, Foster Children, Involuntary Commitment, Medicaid, restraints
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Great Circle Child Abuse in Missouri

Monday, February 22nd, 2021

Great Circle, the largest provider of residential psychiatric treatment for juveniles (mainly in foster care) in Missouri, announced February 15 2021 that it will shut down its residential treatment program in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis.

The FBI raided them on February 2, 2021 due to alleged child abuse. The Missouri Department of Social Services had suspended placements there on January 22, 2021. Webster Groves police arrested three of their employees on suspicion of child abuse. The nonprofit’s former CEO, Vincent Hillyer, was charged with child abuse in 2019.

Great Circle has 12 other residential facilities in Missouri for juvenile psychiatric treatment which so far remain open, although the FBI raid included their facility near St. James, Missouri.

The psychiatric abuse of foster children is a growing concern, especially the use of harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs as a restraint mechanism.

A previous lawsuit against the Missouri Department of Social Services claimed that children in Missouri foster care are at increased risk of being improperly or unnecessarily administered psychotropic drugs, leaving the children vulnerable to various serious adverse effects, including hallucinations, self-harm and suicidal thoughts.

Roughly 13,000 children are in Missouri’s foster care system. More than 30% of them are prescribed these harmful drugs, and 20% are taking two or more drugs at the same time. Medicaid pays for a majority of the healthcare services that children in foster care receive, including psychotropic drugs.

Most psychotropic drugs have not been FDA approved to treat children, who are at great risk of serious harm from these drugs because the drugs play Russian Roulette with neurotransmitters in the brain.

Contact your State legislators and let them know what you think about this.

[UPDATE 3/3/2021] Four additional employees of Great Circle are now charged with abusing residents, including two children with autism.

[UPDATE 3/31/2021] A Missouri Department of Social Services audit of Medicaid claims for services paid through the state to Great Circle identified $1,992,157 in “improper billing.”

Tags:Abuse, Foster Children, Medicaid, Missouri, Psychiatric Drugs, TakeAction
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Task Force Against Racism & Modern Day Eugenics

Monday, February 1st, 2021

“People need proper and effective healthcare, not damaging drugs and electroshock that passes for mental health treatment today. Funds should be redirected from psychiatry into safe, accountable non-psychiatric medical care and social programs. This is especially true for the African American community, given psychiatry’s long history of racist eugenics theories which still permeate modern day mental health care.“

—Reverend Fred Shaw

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is the leading mental health industry watchdog in the world, responsible for helping to enact more than 180 worldwide reforms that protect the public from abusive mental health practices.

In 2020, CCHR International spokesperson Reverend Fred Shaw, started a Task Force against Institutional Racism in the Psychiatric Industry, comprising African American attorneys, civil rights advocates, educators and doctors. The Task Force reminds African Americans of the mental health industry’s history of stigmatizing minorities—from labeling runaway slaves and civil rights protesters as mentally ill and the use of eugenics (population control that targeted African Americans, sterilizing them) to segregating children in schools and the foster-child-welfare system today and drugging them.

This type of rampant abuse of African Americans within the mental health industry continues to this day. Shaw has now launched a Task Force to combat institutional racism and empower the African American and minority communities with facts about modern eugenics masked today as “mental health care.” The Task Force comprises African American leaders, including ministers, attorneys, doctors, psychologists and civil rights advocates.

For generations eugenics—the fraudulent, dehumanizing and harmful psychological theory that certain races of color were not equal to whites and, therefore, “deserved” fewer rights—has been used in the mental health system and in other social policies to justify horrific oppression of African Americans and minorities.

Tags:CCHR, ECT, Eugenics, Foster Children, Racism
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Babies Under a Year Old Being Given Harmful Psychiatric Drugs

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2020

CCHR International obtained the real statistics on the number of U.S. children being prescribed psychiatric drugs: 7.2 million.

Of those, 508,000 are aged 2-5 years old, equal to the entire population of Sacramento, California. 125,000 are babies aged 0-1.

If you’re trying to visualize that number, it’s more babies than would fit into the largest college football stadium in the U.S. (Michigan Stadium, also known as “The Big House.”)

Why this isn’t generally reported is because we were only able to obtain these statistics through the purchase of a costly official report, a truly vital endeavor, made possible only through your donations.

From this, the question you’re probably asking is How on earth could 125,000 babies be put on powerful mind altering drugs?

It’s a logical question. We believe we have the answer and that with your help, together we can do something about it.

CCHR has long suspected that one of the reasons there are so many children on drugs, particularly ones so young and even babies, is through MEDICAID, which is state and federal funding for low income families, their children, as well as for foster care children. There is a financial incentive for child drugging because of Medicaid, as the states receive funding based on costs incurred for treating children, including with psychotropic drugs.

A 2015 report on Medicaid found: “The high rates of psychotropic medication use in the Medicaid population, risks associated with these drugs, and research documenting inappropriate prescribing, have raised concerns, especially for children involved in the child welfare system.”

While there has been some media coverage on this issue and concern raised by legislators, nothing truly effective is being done about it. Moreover, there has never been a state-by-state analysis of exactly how many babies and toddlers are being drugged, using taxpayer dollars (i.e. Medicaid).

In order to fully expose this, and what state legislators are unwittingly funding (baby, toddler and child drugging), CCHR International began filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for state Medicaid records (FOIA only applies to government agencies). What we have found to date is confirming our suspicions. Consider the number of Medicaid-funded children being drugged in the following states:

Georgia 177,469
Pennsylvania 150,250
Illinois 74,635
Utah 46,241

For Missouri in 2014, for example, there were 24,388 children, in or out of foster care, who were receiving public mental health services (meaning they were likely on one or more psychotropic drugs.) Total foster care drug costs have averaged roughly $16 Million per year in Missouri. More than 30 percent of Missouri’s roughly 13,000 Medicaid foster children per month are on at least one psychotropic medication, with 20 percent taking two or more psychotropic medications at the same time.

We can pretty much guarantee that state legislators are unaware that funds are being used to drug so many toddlers and infants. And because Medicaid is funded by the states, legislators can do something about it.

The idea of putting vulnerable babies and toddlers on drugs is horrifying. All of this can be hard to confront. But we must. With your help we can not only expose it, but demand that those in power do something about it.

Please contact your State Representatives and Senators and let them know what you think about this. In Missouri, find your Representative and Senator by 9-digit Zip Code here:http://www.senate.mo.gov/legislookup/ZipLookup.aspx.

Be a Hero and help someone who has been a victim of psychiatric abuse by making a tax deductible donation to CCHR St. Louis!

Tags:CCHR, Child Drugging, Foster Children, Legislation, Medicaid, Missouri
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Child Psychiatric Treatment—Drugs, Solitary Confinement, Torture and Abuse

Wednesday, November 4th, 2020

This Is Why We Fight For Kids

“THERE CAN BE NO KEENER REVELATION OF A SOCIETY’S SOUL THAN THE WAY IN WHICH IT TREATS ITS CHILDREN.” — NELSON MANDELA

It is an industry that electroshocks children including babies, using state funds for lower income families (Medicaid).

THE ABUSE IS NOT LIMITED TO ONE CHAIN OF PSYCHIATRIC FACILITIES OR ONE MODE OF PSYCHIATRIC OR BEHAVIORAL “TREATMENT.” THE ABUSE, WHICH PROLIFERATES THE CHILD MENTAL HEALTH INDUSTRY, IS SYSTEMIC—YET UNKNOWN TO MOST OF THE PUBLIC.

Yet another example—Only one month after the world witnessed the tragic death of George Floyd, unable to breathe as he was physically restrained and held to the ground, 16-year-old Cornelius Frederick, an African American, was physically restrained at Sequel Youth & Family Services’ facility in Michigan, and also cried out, “I can’t breathe!” before passing out. Thirty hours later, on May 1, 2020, he was dead. Cornelius had gone into cardiac arrest while being restrained by Lakeside Academy staff, a residential psychiatric facility that treated foster care and other kids with behavioral issues. A witness to Cornelius’s restraint said, “[T]his kid threw a sandwich. He was being unruly and they couldn’t control him. So, four guys…the size of rugby players tackled him.”

Cornelius is not alone; countless children have suffocated and died after being subjected to deadly restraints within these psychiatric facilities and behavioral treatment centers.

This is not healthcare. This is child abuse. And it is just the tip of the iceberg.

Therefore, please avail yourself of the information presented on our Fight For Kids website. Until enough people become aware of mental health industry abuse of children and teens, and arm themselves with the facts to protect not only their own children, but advocate for those who have no voice, it will continue. The profits will keep rolling in, parents will suffer and children will be abused.

This is the Fight For Kids.

And it is only possible through your support.

Tags:Child Drugging, ECT, Foster Children, restraints
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Psychiatry Profiting from Community Tragedy and Racism

Monday, June 22nd, 2020

In 2010 a 16-year-old African-American foster child died after being injected with two psychiatric drugs and restrained in SSM DePaul Health Center, a St. Louis company-owned psychiatric ward, and ruled a homicide. Less than two years earlier, a death at the same hospital in the Bridgeton suburb of St. Louis had led to a state inquiry that uncovered instances of improperly secluding and restraining patients and failing to report deaths to authorities.

Before she died, the foster child was held down and injected with Geodon (ziprasidone, a psychiatric antipsychotic drug) and Ativan (lorazepam, a psychiatric anti-anxiety drug).

It wasn’t until 2017 that a lawsuit was filed against the Children’s Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services for overdrugging foster children with harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs, for which a settlement was reached in 2019.

Some of the behavioral hospital chains that have come under scrutiny for patient abuse include six facilities operating in Missouri.

And now today the abuse continues, with African-Americans over-represented in restraint-related deaths of children and adults with disabilities, accounting for 22% of the deaths studied while representing only 13% of the total U.S. population. African-Americans are dying from COVID-19 at almost three times the rate of whites.

As a human rights organization, exposing racism and restraint abuse in the mental health system has been a pivotal campaign since the inception in 1969 of Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). This also included exposing psychosurgery experiments on African-American prisoners and a 1994 booklet on psychiatry creating racism. CCHR has successfully worked with the NAACP since 2003, exposing the stigmatizing labeling and drugging of African-American children to obtain three national NAACP resolutions against the forced drugging and also electroshocking of children and teens.

CCHR’s co-founder, Dr. Thomas Szasz, a professor of psychiatry, exposed that while Dr. Benjamin Rush, the “Father of American Psychiatry” asserted he was anti-slavery in the late 1700s and signed the Declaration of Independence, he purchased a child slave that he later freed for compensation. He provided a medical model we still see the impact of today that was used to justify segregation and modern racism. Rush claimed that Blacks suffered from a “medical” disease called “negritude” derived from leprosy. Therefore, he asserted that freed Blacks should be segregated and prevented from inter-racial marriage so as to not spread the disease. Rush believed the “cure” was when their skin turned white.

A seal of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that features Rush, a racist and slave owner, is still used for ceremonial purposes and internal documents. There’s also an annual award the APA gives in his name. How appallingly hypocritical, then, that within days of the recent racial protest marches starting, the APA issued a press statement, saying, it “will not stand for racism against Black Americans,” when history shows otherwise. APA urged anyone suffering from the recent trauma or civil unrest to, “seek psychiatric treatment.”

This comes from a group whose members invented the term “protest psychosis” in the 1960s to describe Blacks participating in the Civil Rights movement. Advertisements placed in psychiatric journals for powerful antipsychotic drugs used angry black men or African tribal symbols to influence the prescriptions of antipsychotics to African-Americans. Today, there is still an over-representation of antipsychotic use among African-Americans and harmful psychotropic drugs are prescribed to African-American children as young as 18 months.

African-American students also receive disproportionate discipline in schools. Representing about 15% of the total enrollment, African-American students accounted for 27% of restraints and 23% of seclusion in schools.

CCHR can access over 50 years of research that documents the horrible betrayal of African-American and other groups by a eugenics-based, racist psychiatric-psychological model that has caused immeasurable harm and suffering.

Click here for more information on how psychiatry creates racism.

Reverend Fred Shaw has worked alongside the NAACP in getting 3 national resolutions passed.

Tags:Abuse, Foster Children, Human Rights, Missouri, Psychiatric Drugs, Racism, Schools, Szasz
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Missouri Settlement Changes Psychiatric Drug Use in Foster Kids

Sunday, July 28th, 2019

A class action federal lawsuit [Case No. 2:17-cv-04102-NKL] against the Missouri Department of Social Services alleging the overdrugging of foster children with harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs was given preliminary approval for settlement by U.S. District Court Judge Nanette Laughrey (Western District of Missouri) on Monday, July 15, 2019.

[Update 1: On December 5, 2019 the Court granted final approval of the Settlement Agreement.]

[Update 2: In an April 3, 2020 order, U.S. District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey awarded a total of $3,253,651 in fees and $132,907 in expenses to the team of 20 plaintiffs’ attorneys.]

The case was first filed in June 2017 by national non-profit organizations Children’s Rights and the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL), the Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics, and pro-bono counsel Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

The lawsuit claimed that children in Missouri foster care are at increased risk of being improperly or unnecessarily administered psychotropic drugs, leaving the children vulnerable to various serious adverse effects, including hallucinations, self-harm and suicidal thoughts.

The settlement calls for multiple reforms, although without any of the defendants admitting any liability concerning any of the claims or allegations in the complaint. Objections, support, or comments by Class members or their legal representatives (or other interested parties) can be provided by October 23, 2019 per the “Notice of Proposed Class Action Settlement in M.B., et al. v. Tidball, et al.”

The Missouri Department of Social Services, on behalf of the Missouri Children’s Division of the Department of Social Services, has contracted with the University of Missouri-Columbia to constitute a Center for Excellence within its Department of Psychiatry to undertake various responsibilities regarding this settlement, for roughly $3.8 million through July 31, 2021, although this contract is not specifically part of the settlement. While we applaud the Missouri government for taking action to address the abuse of foster children in their care, we must note that having psychiatrists oversee psychiatric abuse is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

Specific commitments of the settlement include (these provisions are only briefly summarized here; refer to the actual settlement for full details):
1. Children’s Division (CD) shall maintain a full-time employee responsible for overseeing the implementation of policies and procedures concerning the use of psychotropic drugs for children in CD foster care.
2. Provisions for CD Case Management Staff Training.
3. Provisions for Resource Provider Training.
4. Provisions for training in the child welfare community serving children in Missouri.
5. CD shall maintain sufficient Case Management Staff to perform functions of the agreement.
6. Every child shall have a mental health assessment prior to being prescribed a psychotropic drug.
7. Every child prescribed a psychotropic drug shall have medical examinations.
8. Every child prescribed a psychotropic drug for ongoing use shall have monitoring appointments.
9. Every child prescribed a psychotropic drug shall receive concurrent nonpharmacological treatment.
10. Defendants are committed to developing and operating one or more statewide systems for maintaining medical records and/or medical information of each child in the custody of CD.
11. Defendants are committed to developing and operating one or more systems whereby pertinent medical records and/or medical information of the child will be made available to appropriate members of the child’s treatment team.
12. CD will implement and maintain a system for conducting secondary reviews of prescriptions of psychotropic drugs prescribed to children in the legal custody of CD.
13. CD shall maintain a policy governing informed consent and informed assent for psychotropic drugs, including a process for parental disagreement. The difference between consent and assent is basically that consent comes from the case manager and assent comes from the child.
14. Provisions for emergency administration of psychotropic drugs.
15.Defendants will appoint and maintain a psychotropic drug Advisory Committee to provide professional and technical consultation and policy advice.
16. Provisions for excessive dosage guidelines.

There are other provisions for data validation, enforcement, reporting, and exit criteria from the agreement. Refer to the actual agreement for these details.

Go here for more information about psychiatric abuse in the foster care system.

Tags:Child Drugging, Foster Children, Medicaid, Missouri, Psychiatric Drugs
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