Child advocates encouraged by a new study that found a 58% decline in antipsychotic drugs prescribed to California foster kids over the last decade, but concerns remain over how the state’s f…
California has dramatically curbed its use of antipsychotic medication to control emotionally troubled foster children, according to a new study, raising hopes of a changing culture in the years since a Bay Area News Group investigation exposed the rampant use of those powerful drugs.
But high dosages and combinations of multiple psychiatric drugs can cause more problems than they solve. Antipsychotics – designed to treat adults with severe mental illnesses – not only, these medications often saddle them with diabetes, obesity and irreversible tremors. Not all of the news was positive: Nearly half of the foster youth who continued receiving antipsychotic drugs were not properly monitored for the drugs’ side effects. The lack of testing for things like spikes in blood glucose and cholesterol levels represented a “concerning” lack of required medical oversight, Nunes and his research team found.
The use of psychiatric medications of all types – including mood stabilizers, antidepressants and stimulants – appears to have mostly remained flat over the decade, at more than 12% of all foster children. That’s more than 2.6 times the rate of the general population, according to state data.As a 16-year-old in San Diego County, she was a straight-A student and editor of her school newspaper.
“Across the board, regardless of the type of medication,” she said, “we need to make sure that other intensive, appropriate mental health services are always being offered before medication.”
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