by Kieron McFadden
Lawsuit contends too many psychiatric drugs killed little boy
While outrage at last month's child suicide continues, the mother of a disabled boy contends in a new lawsuit that her son was lethally overmedicated by his psychiatrist.
Amid controversy concerning the improper use of dangerous psychiatric drugs on children, a disabled boy who died in 2007 was overdosed by a cocktail of psychiatric drugs, including two powerful anti-psychotic drugs, his mother claims in a lawsuit filed on the Miami Dade County Court.
Martha Quesada, the mother of 12-year-old Denis Maltez, filed a wrongful death and medical malpractice lawsuit, claiming Denis' psychiatrist, Dr. Steven L. Kaplan, and the Rainbow Ranch group home overmedicated Denis and failed to properly monitor his condition.
Ms Quesada's lawsuit was filed amid the investigation being carried out by Florida's Department of Children & Families into the suicide in April of Gabriel Myers. Gabriel was a 7-year-old foster child who had been subjected to a cocktail of psychiatric drugs when he hanged himself in the bathroom of his foster home. DCF Secretary George Sheldon appointed a task force to study both Gabriel's case, and the wider issue of the use of psychiatric drugs on foster kids.
CHEMICAL RESTRAINTS
According to Ms Quesada's lawsuit, Dennis' psychiatrist, Kaplan, prescribed four mental health drugs: Seroquel and Zyprexa, both anti-psychotic medications; Depakote, an anti-seizure drug sometimes used to stabilize moods; and Clonazepam, a tranquilizer. The lawsuit says the drugs were used ``as chemical restraints to control Denis's behavior.''
Psychiatric drugs are notorious for damaging effects on the brain and nervous system every bit as bad, if not worse than, street drugs, the opportunities they offer for abuse and mis-use and the intense marketing invested in them by the psychiatric-pharmaceutical axis.
In the case of the child drugging scandal on Florida, many of the medications concerned are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use on children and carry strong warnings about their harmful side-effects. Despite this Kaplan, says the lawsuit, ''took no steps to ensure that Denis was not suffering any adverse effects from these medications.''
The suit further claims that Kaplan examined Dennis only once between May 26, 2006 and the day he died in May 2007. This was despite warning signs that the drugs may have been harming the boy, according to the suit. In June 2006, Ruth Owens Kruse Educational Center, reported for example that he was sleeping through class.
HUMAN WAREHOUSING
This suit comes amid growing fears that psychiatric drugs may be being used as an easy option to render troublesome children tractable rather than investing in them proper counseling and human care.
Against a background of intense marketing by the pharmaceutical manufacturers and grass-roots "pushing" by psychiatrists, those fears in turn prompt concerns as to just how widespread the cheap and easy option of drugging people so as to keep them quiet - so called "human warehousing" - has become, as opposed to going to the trouble of providing proper care and treatment.
PSYCHIATRIC DRUGGING PANDEMIC?
Are we in fact now in the grip of a psychiatric-pharmaceutical driven pandemic of "legal" drugging?
How much damage both to the individual and the society as a whole is being done by this highly profitable program? And just how much does this institutionalized drug pushing undermine efforts to protect our citizens, especially our kids, from the illegal trade?
This in turn brings into view an even more startling issue and one I will be addressing in forthcoming articles:
In the wake of new knowledge and advances in the field of nutrition, has drugging been rendered as obsolete as the application of leeches or the casting out of demons?
Do we actually NEED to drug people at all?
