Coach JewelryPharmaceutical companies have recently paid out the largest legal settlements
in U.S. history — including the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations — for illegally marketing antipsychotic drugs. The payouts totaled more
than $5 billion. But the worst costs of the drugs are being borne by the most vulnerable patients: children and teens in psychiatric hospitals, foster care
and juvenile prisons, as well as elderly people in nursing homes. They are medicated for conditions for which the drugs haven't been proven safe or effective
— in some cases, with death as a known possible outcome.
The benefit for drug companies is cold profit. Antipsychotics bring in some $14 billion a year. So-called "atypical" or "second-generation" antipsychotics
like Geodon, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Risperdal rake in more money than any other class of medication on the market and, dollar for dollar, they are
the biggest selling drugs in America.
coach outlet Although these medications are primarily approved to
treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which combined affect 3% of the population, in 2010 there were 56 million prescriptions filled for atypical
antipsychotics.
In a presentation this week at an American Psychiatric Association meeting, Dr. John Goethe, director of the Burlingame Center for Psychiatric Research in
Connecticut, reported that over the last 10 years, more than half of all children aged 5 to 12 in psychiatric hospitals were prescribed antipsychotics — and
95% of these prescriptions were for second-generation antipsychotics.
hermes birkinMany of these children didn't have a condition for which the drugs have been shown to be
helpful: 44% of youngsters with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 45% of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were treated
with them.
(More on TIME.com: SPECIAL: Kids and Mental Health)
Pharmacologically, the ADHD prescriptions make no sense: FDA-approved drugs for the condition raise levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, while
antipsychotics do the opposite, lowering them.
Goethe also noted another study that showed that the number of office visits by children and teens that included antipsychotic drug prescriptions rose 600%
from 1993 to 2002. "The obvious second-generation bias is very apparent in these data, as is the irrational use of antipsychotics for indications such as
PTSD and ADHD for which there is no controlled evidence whatsoever that these are safe or effective treatments," says Dr. Bruce Perry, senior fellow at the
ChildTrauma Academy in Houston.
nike sb shoes(Full disclosure: Dr. Perry is my co-author on two books.)
The situation is similar in state-run juvenile detention systems. Late last week, an exposé by the Palm Beach Post revealed that antipsychotics were among
the top drugs purchased by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), and were largely used in kids for reasons that were not approved by the
government — for instance, sleeplessness or anxiety. The Post reported:
In 2007, for example, DJJ bought more than twice as much Seroquel as ibuprofen. Overall, in 24 months, the department bought 326,081 tablets of Seroquel,
Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for use in state-operated jails and homes for children.
Coach Madison CollectionsThat's enough to hand out 446 pills a day, seven days
a week, for two years in a row, to kids in jails and programs that can hold no more than 2,300 boys and girls on a given day.
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