California Moves To Stop Misuse Of Psychiatric Meds In Foster Care

By the time DeAngelo Cortijo was 14, he had been in more than a dozen foster homes. He had run away and lived on the streets for months, and he had been diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders, attachment disorder, intermittent explosive disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder. He had been in and out of mental hospitals and heavily medicated.

Feds Pay for Drug Fraud: 92 Percent of Foster Care, Poor Kids Prescribed Antipsychotics Get Them for Unaccepted Uses 

The release in late March of an alarming new report by federal investigators has confirmed in shocking new detail what has been known for years: Poor and foster care kids covered by Medicaid are being prescribed too many dangerous antipsychotic drugs at young ages for far too long — mostly without any medical justification at all.

Second-Generation Antipsychotic Drug Use Among Medicaid-Enrolled Children: Quality-of-Care Concerns Report (OEI-07-12-00320) 03-25-2015

Second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) are a class of drugs used to treat psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression. SGAs are widely used to treat children enrolled in Medicaid who have mental health conditions. However, SGAs can have serious side effects and little clinical research has been conducted on the safety of treating children with these drugs.

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