How New York Treats Disabled Kids
Tens of thousands of powerful pills created to treat serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia are given to developmentally disabled people in the care of New York State every day. … “Everything with them is, let’s sedate the kid instead of trying to solve the problem,” Ms. Strignano said. “They want to dope her up; they want her to sit there like she doesn’t exist.”
Full article on increases in NY children’s drug doses without parental consent.
How does New York treat problem kids? It sedates them.
Disgusting.
This sounds like the horror stories from the 1800’s!
Same thing is true of nursing homes. Instead of hiring sufficient staff to placate the inmates, nursing homes threaten to evict an unruly tenant unless their family convinces a doctor to prescribe powerful antipsychotics, which makes the job of supervising old folks easier. In years past, nursing homes would have handed out happy pills like Red Hots. But state and federal laws prohibit chemical restraints so now the nursing homes have to convince a doctor to prescribe the pills.
Another example of the over-reliance on psychiatrics.
This is truly sad, and more unfortunate still because it’s not confined to New York (or, as Buster mentioned, to kids.)
After working in an assisted living for three years in various capacities, I believe Buster truly hit the nail on the head: pills are an attempted replacement for people. The pills are a cheaper form of “care” than labor and represent huge cost savings.