Foster Survivors Talk about Psych Drugs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al2UfX7kycM
14 Minutes 43 Seconds long
One girl was told that if she couldn't take the pills
she could not stay in that particular Foster home.
(Presumeably "special needs" gets Foster more money.)
Destroyed IQ's
Side Effects
etc.

Greegor wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al2UfX7kycM

I see there was an unbiased monitor of the interview....R R R R

14 Minutes 43 Seconds long
One girl was told that if she couldn't take the pills
she could not stay in that particular Foster home.

....one girl was told...Mmmmhmmmm..yeah, I'll go to the bank with that one.

And you have it on good authority the pills were not doctor prescribed,
right?

Greg, a lot of folks don't like the side effects of their psychotropic
meds.

Problem is they hurt themselves and sometimes others when they go off
their meds without supervision.

I turned down a good paying job many years back managing a string of
CMI sheltered residences...because the residents were free to come and
go and refuse meds if they chose.

That's the law. I would have had to continue to house them with all the
risks to staff and other patients (which they no longer were,
technically, except when they went in to see their doctor..if they did
at all).

But a foster parent does NOT have to submit to the dangers to their
family, and to the child themselves if said child refuses to take their
meds. We're talking a teen here, not an 8 year old...not that one that
is mentally ill can't be quite dangerous to self and others.

(Presumeably "special needs" gets Foster more money.)

Nope. Almost to the child, they are ALL federally labeled as "special
needs" by way of being in foster care. In fact, being a black male child
over 6 or 7 I believe, in foster care is one of those indicators.

Being part of a large sibling group.

Having a chronic physical or mental ailment.

Being behaviorally difficult beyond the difficult non designated child.

For instance, a determined feces smearer at first will NOT qualify for a
"special rate" (what you really mean and should learn about before you
babble) but after some weeks, sometimes months, with no recourse but to
have 24/7 supervision on the child, they likely will be seen by a nurse,
(the usual procedure) and that nurse will determine if the case rates a
special RATE. And how much.

Destroyed IQ's

Or dead. Or have caused another's death.

And I've known MENSA members 'under a psychiatrist's care' as they put
it when they mean "on meds." Didn't seem to slow them down much,
cognitively.

It depends on the dose, and the pharmaceutical.

Side Effects

Able to function near or at normal levels for most. A few never can be
helped with meds, and function near normal. The exceptional case is
being used by you to chuckle "pretend to claim" the common case.
'Taint so.

etc.

Yes, and more etc. would be that those who are chronically mentally ill
(CMI) go on and off over the years, and usually learn eventually to live
with the discomfort of the meds because the alternatives are much worse.

Like a lot of jail time with sometimes violent dangerous criminals.

Although the ones I worked with said it was damn fun to go "off" for
awhile and have a happy nut experience. Some kinds of mental illness
have fun parts to it. Sort of like being stoned they say.

I couldn't officially agree, but we'd do the "nudge nudge wink wink,"
number knowing that as long as they arranged for some supervision and
externally applied controls and were not adjudged homicidal or suicidal
maniac it was cool with me. (Those folks were usually incarcerated.)

I often did the supervision for them.

You see I see the mentally ill as people. Some I like, some I don't. But
that's according to their other qualities. I feel much the same about
non CMI.

People with an illness. Nothing more. It's the same to me if someone had
both legs broken. I would not want them driving a standard equipped car.

But I'd drive for them.

Having fun wallowing in your ignorance are yah?

Greg, honest, it's perfectly okay not to know something. I'm real short,
for instance, on knowledge about brain surgery.

I take no offense when it's brought to my attention. Others would, IF I
STARTED BABBLING ON ABOUT THE DANGERS OF BRAIN SURGERY.

Especially if they were brain surgeons I was babbling to.

I have a bit of familiarity with CMI folks and meds. Stop babbling about
things you don't know about, and start learning so your babbling will at
least fool those more ignorant than you.

Kane

Did you see the video Kane?

Greegor wrote:
Did you see the video Kane?

Nope. Not going to either.

You read Marshal McCluen?

Pretty much anyone these days can take a community college course in
video production, sign on with the local public access cable source, and
have tons of equipment and advice, on how to make a 'spontaneous
unrehearsed' vid after rehearsing for a few days, and getting that
makeup thing down right.

Put it all on CD and feed it to Youtube as 'genuine citizen in distress.'

Get tons of sympathy and maybe a few bucks.

You, Greg, as long as it serves your agenda, will swallow just about
anything.

Won'tchanow?

Why don't you just describe it to us, eh?

I notice that rather than ANSWER my questions and challenges, you
aborted my entire reply and asked a stupid question, as usual.

What would I see different from the possibilities I mentioned?

You got to give me more tease, Greg. I don't lay down and spread'm for
JUST flirtin' yah simple ****.

R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R

0:-]

Greegor wrote:
Did you see the video Kane?

What I should have said to a stupid question poorly punctuated is:


"No, is Citizen Kane on tape now?"

Greegor wrote:
Did you see the video Kane?

I wasn't talking about the video, Greg.

On Jan 28, 11:05 pm, "Greegor" wrote:
Did you see the video Kane?

I have made this demand myself several times gregg. Has nothing to do
with $$$, has to do with a child that is out of control getting back
into control. Doctors do not prescribe these things lightly gregg, or
for no reason. These meds help kids, keep them focused, from harming
themselves and others, and can normalize an otherwise far from normal
child.

These kids come to us screwed up gregg, and we are tasked with getting
them back to where they should be in both social development and age
appropriate activities. Its kind of hard for these kids to get there
by themselves, someone has to help them. If the parents were capable
of helping them they would have done it already, right?

Ron

Ron wrote
Doctors do not prescribe these things lightly gregg, or
for no reason.

In the recent Texas report they found massive numbers of cases
where doctors prescribed psychotropics remotely and for
children they never saw.

It is ILLEGAL for a doctor to prescribe a medication
without ever seeing the patient.

Yet in Texas Foster care, this was COMMON.

Correct me if I'm wrong but don't Fosters tend to be
a bit OLDER than bio parents?

Don't OLDER parents/contractors see normal
high energy kids as ""hyperactive""??

And if they are contractors all they have to do is
call up the state's stooge doctor and they will
write a prescription without ever seeing the kid!

On Feb 12, 9:58 am, "Ron" wrote:
On Jan 28, 11:05 pm, "Greegor" wrote:

Did you see the video Kane?

I have made this demand myself several times gregg. Has nothing to do
with $$$, has to do with a child that is out of control getting back
into control. Doctors do not prescribe these things lightly gregg, or
for no reason. These meds help kids, keep them focused, from harming
themselves and others, and can normalize an otherwise far from normal
child.

These kids come to us screwed up gregg, and we are tasked with getting
them back to where they should be in both social development and age
appropriate activities. Its kind of hard for these kids to get there
by themselves, someone has to help them. If the parents were capable
of helping them they would have done it already, right?

Ron

So then, Greg, isn't this about the point at which you start screaming
about the Child Abuse Industry and how Ron and people like him, foster
parents, are in it for the money?

Let's hear it.

Try some proof too, for a chance, eh?

And I'm not insterested in your stupid video. If you can't SHOW it
here, then I am not going to go looking at it.

Tell us what you got from it. That I'll debate with you.

For I have SEEN what I have seen, just as Ron as seen what he has.

And all the garbage propaganda to the contrary, it's NOT what you
claim, or the other sick little propagandists that thrive on the tripe
they vomit and re-eat together.

Not buying, stupid.

0;]

On 12 Feb 2007, Ron wrote:

On Jan 28, 11:05 pm, "Greegor" wrote:
Did you see the video Kane?

I have made this demand myself several times gregg. Has nothing to do
with $$$, has to do with a child that is out of control getting back
into control. Doctors do not prescribe these things lightly gregg, or
for no reason. These meds help kids, keep them focused, from harming
themselves and others, and can normalize an otherwise far from normal
child.

Those are good reasons, Ron. Any data to backup that those were actually
the case?

These kids come to us screwed up gregg, and we are tasked with getting
them back to where they should be in both social development and age
appropriate activities. Its kind of hard for these kids to get there
by themselves, someone has to help them. If the parents were capable
of helping them they would have done it already, right?

Ron

At least this one kid weren't helped:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n2104249.shtml

(CBS) Colby Holcomb's mom concedes that the 8-year-old, who's been
diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, can be a handful at home. But
does such behavior merit the treatment Colby received in foster care?

Andrea Holcomb lost custody of her son when he was 7, after her ex-husband
made allegations of sexual abuse, CBS News national correspondent Byron
Pittsreports. These allegations later proved false ? but in the meantime,
Colby was placed in the Texas foster care system. For 18 months, he was in
at least five foster homes. It's a time that still haunts Colby and his
family.

Andrea says Colby was on at least 20 different drugs when he was in foster
care. Yet, she says she has "no idea" why and says it was never explained
to her.

While in foster care, Colby was also diagnosed as bipolar. According to
his medical records, he was taking as many as four medications at the same
time that gave him seizures.

"I woke up at the hospital with something stuck in my arm," Colby says.

He is not alone.

"I found babies, 2-year olds, 3-year olds being given mind-altering
drugs," says Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Texas' state comptroller.

Strayhorn conducted her own two-year investigation into allegations that
foster kids in Texas are overmedicated.

"Children in foster care in Texas are dying. Children in foster care are
being drugged," Strayhorn says.

There are similar allegations being made in California, Ohio and Florida.

"In Florida, for example, foster kids younger than 5 years old were
treated with psychiatric medications at a rate nearly four times higher
than the general population of children receiving Medicaid.

Gwen Olsen, a former pharmaceuticals representative who quit her job and
wrote the book, "Confessions Of A Prescription Drug Pusher," knows
firsthand about the impact of anti-psychotic drugs on children.

"They clamp down on the central nervous system. In effect, they reduce
your mobility and that sort of thing, so they are sort of like a chemical
straitjacket," she says.

Psychiatrist Christopher Correll is leading a nationwide study on the
impact of anti-psychotic drugs have on all children.

"It is a serious step to use an anti-psychotic, there?s no doubt about it.
But I think it is also very important to realize that these medications
are used under very serious circumstances to actually help patients who
have serious symptoms," Correll says.

But if the foster care system is designed to protect children who've been
harmed, why would they engage in this if in anyway it was harmful to
children?

"To me, the true travesty of the situation is that we take children who
just got a bum rap in life to begin with and they get into the system and
are further abused chemically," Olsen says.

Colby Holcomb is home and feeling better. He is no longer taking any
medications ? but his mother worries how many Colbys might still be in the
system.


Doan