Rutgers/Columbia study: Poor children more likely to get antipsychotics

[alp227]

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics
by Duff Wilson
The New York Times

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.

On Tuesday, a pediatric advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration met to discuss the health risks for all children who take antipsychotics. The panel will consider recommending new label warnings for the drugs, which are now used by an estimated 300,000 people under age 18 in this country, counting both Medicaid patients and those with private insurance.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/health/12medicaid.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[ThomCat]

1. This falls into the "No Shit" catagory.

Poor kids come from families that are conditioned to do what caseworkers tell them to do, or else. They know that there are a whole lot of ways they can be threatened and harmed because they are poor. Any benefit they receive can be threatened somehow by a phone call made to somewhere claiming that they aren't doing what some "expert" says is necessary.

Poor families can be bullied and coerced. Middle class families can say no.

Poor kids also aren't valued. They aren't considered as important by most people and it is assumed by most people that they won't really have a worthwhile future, so it isn't necessary to consider any possible complications. The administrators can consider only the unrealistic best case scenario and insist that the parents do so too.

Middle class kids are more valuable, and are assumed to have more potential, so the potential risks and downsides are considered. the administrators are more likely to see risks with those kids, and less likely to take those risks with those kids.

[alp227]

3. Good insight And...

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

[LeftishBrit]

2. Worrying.

Antipsychotics can be a lifesaver for those who need them, but they can have serious side effects and should not be used lightly. It sounds as though they may sometimes be given too quickly because they are cheaper than longer-term treatments, or careful evaluations.