Preface: And the children of the poor will get anti-psychotics prescribed for them by clinicians in the future social service centers to be established at surplus PUSD school sites. The poor, and their clinicians, will always be with us.
Poor Children Likelier
to Get Antipsychotics
By DUFF WILSON –NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/health/12medicaid.html?em=&pagewanted=print
Excerpt:
New
federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by
Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic
medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private
insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for
less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.
Those
findings, by a team from Rutgers and Columbia, are almost certain to add fuel
to a long-running debate. Do too many children from poor families receive
powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it
is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that
may be handled much differently for middle-class children?
The
questions go beyond the psychological impact on Medicaid children, serious as
that may be. Antipsychotic drugs can also have severe physical side effects,
causing drastic weight gain and metabolic changes resulting in lifelong
physical problems.
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