The Government Accountability Office just released a study looking at foster kids around the country, and how they are prescribed psychiatric medications. According to the study, about a third of all children in foster care have been prescribed at least one mind-altering drug, a rate at least five times higher than non-foster kids.
Of all the states examined in the study, foster children in Texas were the most likely to receive powerful psychiatric drugs. Even more startling is the number of children who were prescribed at least five different psychiatric drugs at the same time. Foster kids in Texas are 53 times more likely to be on five different drugs at the same time, compared with non-foster kids. That’s not a typo: 53 times more likely.
This will obviously raise all sorts of questions, about child welfare, about state economics (tax payers are buying those drugs), and about the relationship between the drug companies profiting from these prescriptions (hugely in the case of Texas) and the politicians putting forth these dangerous policies.
