For years, few questioned how doctors treated the emotional trauma of California’s abused and neglected children – and nobody monitored how often they handed out psychiatric drugs that can turn fragile childhoods into battles with obesity and bouts of stupor.

Now, a Bay Area News Group investigation into the prescribing habits of the state’s foster care doctors reveals for the first time how a fraction of those doctors has been fueling the medicating of California’s most vulnerable kids.

A mere 10 percent of the state’s highest prescribers were responsible about 50 percent of the time when a foster child received an antipsychotic, the riskiest class of what are known as psychotropic drugs — with some of the most harmful side effects. The startling numbers are revealed as part of a new analysis of Medi-Cal pharmacy data, which the news organization obtained through a public records request.

These same doctors often relied on risky, unproven combinations of the drugs, a practice widely rejected by medical associations and other states.

In San Bernardino County, one psychiatrist prescribed antipsychotics to 328 foster children — 85 percent of the young patients to whom he gave a psychiatric drug in the five years the investigation examined. And when one antipsychotic didn’t work — or wasn’t enough — Dr. Warris Walayat routinely prescribed another.

Many of the highest prescribers stand out for other practices that raise questions about their judgment or objectivity: A psychiatrist who oversees treatment at a Riverside County group home for troubled children is a self-proclaimed “spokesperson for pharmaceutical companies.” A doctor training psychiatry residents at a San Diego children’s center once prescribed an antipsychotic to an out-of-control kindergartner. And a veteran Visalia child psychiatrist touts a drug approved to treat mania and schizophrenia as an effective “sleep aid.”

http://extras.mercurynews.com/druggedkids/

Suggestions for our foster care children’s behavior instead of drugs or medications:

1. Love and understanding
2. Environment of learning, music, nature walks, whole foods
3. Treating them like our own children
4. Taking them to join volunteer opportunities
5. Please email more suggestions to motherhealth@gmail.com