On a Lighter Note....

On Saturday afternoon I was watching the NFL draft when the story of first round draft pick Michael Oher came on the air. "Big Mike" is a foster care success story. Now a multimillionaire, Michael Oher was placed into foster care at the age of 8 when his father was murdered and his mother became a heavy drug user. He bounced around to four different foster homes before the age of 16 when he was adopted by the Tuohy family, a rich white family from Memphis. With the help of the Tuohys the 6'6 330 lb Oher, overcame major learning disabilities and attended college at the University of Mississippi where he was a standout Offensive Tackle. "Big Mike" has had an amazing journey and has one of the most heartwarming sports stories of the year.

research on overmedication of foster children

There are over 500,000 children currently in the foster care system and according to the child welfare league of America more that half have mental illness or serious behavioral problems. I will be posting an MSNBC report from 2007 that has answered the majority of my questions about what the courts are doing to ensure the safety of these children. I found that many states have implemented policies that requires court review of any psychiatric drugs that are prescribed to foster children. Every state has either passed or has a proposed bill to have legal review of medications prescribed to foster children. Although this is a sign of progress, legislators believe that it will be very difficult to have proper oversight of these programs. The issue of medication of foster children will become more prevalent in our legal system as public outrage builds over cases of overdose and suicide of foster children. If you would like to read more about the issue, i have posted several articles on my links section including the MSNBC report.

Phychiatric Drugs for Foster Children

Through my recent research, i have found that foster children are more likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder than the average child. There is currently a major debate concerning whether or not psychiatric drugs should be prescribed to these children at the high rate that it is currently being used. critics claim that psychiatric drugs are being overused in all children and could have major negative side effects such as a risk suicide. Sadly, in the process of researching i stumbled upon a case from April 22nd that dealt directly to my research. A 7 year old foster child in Florida committed suicide in the shower and doctors blame the suicide on the use of a three drug cocktail that was prescribed to the child by a medical professional. The article i have posted claims that the boys psychiatrists used "problematic practices" when prescribing three very powerful drugs the a seven year old boy. This horrific case is the most recent of a number of deaths that have to due with the overuse of psychiatric drugs in children.

Lack of Mental Health Training

Through my recent research, I have encountered multiple articles by CASA and medical professionals that claim that there is a lack of training among mental health professionals as well foster parents. Foster parents are the most affected by the lack of training because they usually don't have any formal training in dealing with mental health issues. I have also posted a web page that deals specifically with ways to help foster parents deal with these issues. There are also specific case studies done by CASA in the first link I posted. Hopefully in the upcoming week i will hopefully be able to interview a mental health professional that deals with foster children. Only 3% of mental health professionals are trained to deal with foster children. Therefore, interviewing one of these rare individuals will surely add to my knowledge and research on the subject.

First Post

In my first post i wanted to go over what I have done as far as researching and interviews and also give a brief overview of what i have planned for the next few weeks . For my first interview I went over to the Kids Matter offices to interview a woman named Susan who works closely with foster children through the CASA program. It was in this interview where I began to develop an interest in the effects that the foster system has on a child's mental health. Susan, who works with foster children on a daily basis, informed me that the most prevalent issue with these children is anger management. Through research that I have done since the interview I have learned that while many children in the system deal with anger problems anywhere between 40-80% of children in the system have a mental health disorder. Many of these disorders even require psychiatric treatment. I have posted my first link to my page so please take a look at it. It is a journal article from CASA and has a lot of useful information about mental health issues in foster children. Hopefully sometime in the next week i will be interviewing a mental health professional who deals directly with the foster kids. I will be posting to this page frequently in the next few weeks.