Medicaid Pays For Mind Altering Drugs Given To Foster Care Youth

0
450
Contributed by Amantullah Akbar

 

Across America, doctors are putting youth in foster care covered by Medicaid insurance on powerful, mind-altering drugs at rates up to 13 times that of children in the general population. What’s more, doctors are prescribing foster children drugs at doses beyond what the Food and Drug Administration has approved, sometimes in potentially dangerous combinations according to a new report by the federal Government Accountability Office. Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful anti-psychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests.


The report, published in late 2011 in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster care are given two anti-psychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.

“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,” said Susan dosReis, an associate professor in the University Of Maryland School Of Pharmacy and the lead author.

The implication, Dr. dosReis and other experts said: Doctors are treating foster children’s behavioral problems with the same powerful drugs given to people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. “We simply don’t have evidence to support this kind of use, especially in young children,” Dr. dosReis said.

The new study focused on one of the most powerful classes of drugs, anti-psychotics. It found that about 2 percent of foster children took at least one such drug, even though schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which the drugs are approved, are extremely rare in young children.

It is well known that children in foster care are subject to abuse, neglect and even death while in the home of foster parents. In some cases it is a continuation of abuse received from their parents – the reason for the separation. This report exposes that these vulnerable souls are also pray to medical professionals for another type of abuse. There is no doubt there exist objectionable behavior from children and young adults that live abuse of any kind, drugging them beyond the federal approval dosages and combinations is not the solution or cure.

According to the Casey Foundation, 12 to 18 months after leaving foster care 27% of the male and 10% of the female leaving the foster care system will be incarcerated.  Eighty percent of prison inmates have been through the foster care system.

His Eminence Sheik Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, Vice Chancellor of the Quranic Open University explains in his book Quranic Psychiatry, that mental diseases are actually diseases of the soul.  The words of Allah have healing for all the creatures, especially man.  Prayers of Prophets Abraham, Moses, Jesus and the Last Messenger of Allah, Muhammad, peace be upon them all, are contained in the Holy Qur’an and the Old Testament (if available without interpolation).  He further points out that at present many “psychiatrists” neither believe in Allah the Almighty nor the soul. Therefore, they claim to heal man’s mental ailments – diseases of the soul, by physical means, for example, as in the case with these children, the misuse of powerful anti-psychotic drugs and in other cases with the use of electric shocks.

As humanitarians what we expect in the name of humanity, is that leaving aside professional pride, psychiatrist must look towards other directions, the non-physical aspect of man which is his soul – its diseases, causes, symptoms and remedies.

Thumbnail Image: