Bill To Crack Down On Psychiatric Drug Prescriptions To Foster Children Advances
An investigation by The San Jose Mercury News found that the California foster system was relying on powerful anti-psychotic drugs to soothe troubled and traumatized children. The legislation would grant the California Medical Board more authority in regulating doctors who overprescribe the drugs.
The San Jose Mercury News:
Foster Care Bill Targets Excessive Prescribing Of Psychiatric Drugs
The voices of foster youth and their advocates overcame the powerful physicians lobby in the Capitol on Monday, as a bill to identify and investigate California doctors who overprescribe psychiatric drugs to traumatized foster children won a key Senate vote. ... California's foster care system has come to rely on powerful antipsychotic drugs to sedate troubled teens, the newspaper's investigation revealed. But while a series of bills passed last year instituted many new measures to curb the practice, the laws did nothing to target the source of the drugs: the doctors who prescribe them. (De Sa, 4/11)