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The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) of Florida, a non-profit mental health watchdog dedicated to the eradication of abuses committed under the guise of mental health, is calling for an investigation into the heavy psychiatric drugging of children, especially foster children, in Florida.
In 2015 a draft report from the research arm of Florida’s child-protection system showed that foster children are being put on psychotropic medications without caregivers following proper procedures and that 11 percent of the children in foster care had active prescriptions for at least one psychotropic drug. Additionally, a review of 140 children’s files showed that just 20 percent of these children met all the key requirements for administering such medication.[1]
The Florida policies for using psychotropic drugs on foster kids was updated after the tragic death of 7-year-old Gabriel Myers in 2009, who was found hanging from a shower fixture in his foster home, an apparent suicide, after having been prescribed two “black box” medications intended for adults.
The psychiatric drugging of children is not just confined to the foster care system. In 2011 a two-year investigation concluded that kids in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Texas were “prescribed psychotropic drugs at rates 2.7 to 4.5 times higher than other children in Medicaid in 2008.”[2]
Currently 8 million U.S. children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs, with more than 1 million between the ages of zero to five.[3] Children are being drugged simply because psychiatry has pathologized normal childhood behaviors, and repackaged them as “mental disorders.” The result is that millions of children are being drugged for behaviors reclassified by psychiatry as “disease.”
“Dangerous psychiatric drugs are being given to infants and toddlers despite the known debilitating side effects of death, homicides and suicides that are reported in older children and adults taking these medications,”[4] stated Diane Stein. “Why is this being done despite the known risks? Because a psychiatrist prescribing drugs can make up to four times as much as one who doesn’t and drugs prescribed for ADHD alone make billions every year. It is all about the money.”[5]
Individuals are invited to the center, located at 109 N. Fort Harrison Avenue in downtown Clearwater, to learn more about the dangers associated with psychiatric drugs as well as alternatives to medication. To learn more, please call 727-442-8820 or visit www.cchrflorida.org.
About CCHR:
Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHR’s mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections.
It was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who brought the terror of psychiatric imprisonment to the notice of the world. In March 1969, he said, “Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the ‘free world’ tortured, castrated, killed. All in the name of ‘mental health.’”
[1] orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2015/09/22/report-finds-florida-foster-kids-put-on-psychotropic-drugs-without-following-proper-procedures
[2] npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/12/01/143017520/foster-kids-even-infants-more-likely-to-be-given-psychotropic-drugs
[3] cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/
[4] cchrflorida.org/infants-being-given-psychiatric-drugs-on-the-rise/
[5] apa.org/monitor/2012/06/prescribing.aspx
Release ID: 162566