"Your children are not your children..." Do you know what your parental rights are?

Marianna, Kahlil's Sister. Painting by Kahlil Gibran

On Children

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran

via parentalrights on youtube:

Overruled: Government Invasion of your Parental Rights (Official Movie)

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

"The Bill of Rights was designed trustfully to prohibit forever two favorite crimes of all known governments: the seizure of private property without adequate compensation and the invasion of the citizen's liberty without justifiable cause and due process."  H.L. Mencken 

 quotes from "Quotationary" by Leonard Roy Frank; link to website. 

parentalrights.org

via Nancy Schafer playlist:

Nancy Schaefer "The Unlimited Power of Child Protective Services"





published as 'Parental Rights Under Attack' November 18, 2011 and January 17, 2012 with 'Overruled'

Kahlil Gibran via katzanddogz.com 

The Plan: monitor a dangerous paradigm of care

On April 30, 2012 I found out that the PolicyLab at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia announced the publication of an article in the professional Journal, Children and Youth Services Review Science Direct.  The article is part of the follow up to the Senate Investigation into the use of psychotropic drugs on foster children.  This article is to report on the prevalence of psychotropic drug use on foster children served by Medicaid in 47 states and the District of Columbia over a six year period.  I read the press release online in the Wall Street Journal’s Market watch, which proclaims this study, “lays the groundwork for state-level action.”   I was eager to read the actual journal article.  I couldn’t afford the $20. fee to access the article online, so I contacted the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital’s public relations office and the staff sent me a copy.  

The press release quotes the lead author, David Rubin, M.D., "We're not saying these medications should never be used for children, but the high rate at which they're used by children in foster care indicates that other interventions and supports, such as trauma-based counseling, may not be in place for them. In other words, health care providers may not have other, non-medication, tools to offer families dealing with mental health concerns," said Rubin. "Responding to high and growing levels of antipsychotic use will not simply require efforts to restrict their use, but calls for larger investments in mental health programs that help these children cope with trauma psychologically."   

Reading the article itself, I was struck by the fact that there is no mention of the best interests of foster children. Ultimately the press release in Business Watch was a gross exaggeration of what the article itself delivers.  The Journal article doesn't lay much groundwork, nor does it outline a meaningful plan of action. The article fails to offer much hope of meaningful change, or an ethical effort to protect the health and lives of children in foster care. The press release sadly, was a disappointing distortion of the Journal Article.  ACYF plan on continuing to allowing foster children to be prescribed psychiatric drugs in the absence of empirical evidence of efficacy AND safety; and without a medical indication, which is referred to as Off Label, (probably because it sounds a lot less serious than Human Experimentation) is not ethical medicine. it is not moral or legal to allow children to be given ‘treatments’ which have no scientific evidence to support their use. The well-documented negative effects of the neuroleptic drugs, calls for stronger action than merely ‘monitoring’ their continued use, and compiling Adverse Event statistics.  All due respect to the professionals who produced this article, reporting the story without mentioning the fact that there is a great deal of controversy over the off label use of neuroleptic and other psychotropic drugs in children, is not ethical journalism. The a plan to monitor what is in reality, a gross departure from ethical medical standards in the Hippocratic tradition, cannot be in foster children’s best interest.

What Bryan Samuels, Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) needs to do is stop allowing children in the Child Welfare system to be used as a means to defraud Medicaid, and stop allowing children to be drugged without a valid medical reason.  The neuroleptic drugs are teratogenic and experts estimate 50% of children who are given the drugs for schizophrenia are expected to develop Tardive Dyskinesia---this can be permanent and disabling...

When did off-label prescription of drugs absent any definitive evidence, no indication e.g. empirical evidence for safety or efficacy for the purpose prescribed become ‘Standard Practice’?  How in the hell did giving children drugs with serious disabling and even fatal risks ‘off-label’ become an acceptable medical practice without any evidence of efficacy? Safe the drugs are not.  It is obviously not based on ‘sound medical judgement’ or ethical medical principles; there is no evidence base for what is and has been Standard Practice for decades.  It is also Medicaid Fraud--drugs prescribed off-label with no recognized indication, billed to Medicaid.  Even after decades of using neuroleptic drugs to ‘treat’ aggression in children; there still is no body of evidence to support using neuroloptics off-label to treat aggression?  How can this be?

I suspect there is evidence that indicates this is not a good idea, and that it is not a medically valid use for these drugs.  I know if there were in fact valid evidence to support what is ‘off-label’ use, it would be trumpeted in all the ‘peer-reviewed’ journals.  This is not medicine being practiced in the Hippocratic tradition; dangerous neurotoxins usedon children without an evidence base to support the drugs use; it is in fact experimental treatment on vulnerable Humans.  ACYF has carelessly and purposely allowed foster children to be used as guinea pigs in drug trials. These children are offered no legal protection; not even the Nuremberg Code protects these human test subjects. ACYF acting in loco parentis for foster children, has failed to protect them from iatrogenic injury, failed to preserve their Human Rights, and has allowed them to be guinea pigs in real world practice using neurotoxic drugs. The data gathered for the Children and Youth Services Review doesn't even mention the toll of iatrogenic injuries, illnesses, adverse events and fatalities...This data is relevant and germane to the discussion, and is not even mentioned...

ACYF is and has been allowing foster children to be medically treated with dangerous drugs which are not tested or approved for the reasons the drugs are prescribed to the children in State Custody.  Prescribing neurotoxic psychiatric drugs ‘off-label’ e.g. without a valid medical indication, is unethical. Allowing it to continue fails to protect children from iatrogenic injuries and chronic diseases.  Psychiatrists who defend this mistreatment of their patients, because psycho-social and cognitive behavioral treatments are unavailable; are attempting to justify unethical medical practices.  The drugs do not ‘treat’ an identified pathology; but all neuroleptic drugs, and many other psychiatric drugs in other drug classes can cause serious illnesses and even sudden death.

This plan is not child-centered; and it certainly does not appear to be driven by the needs of foster children who are in need of mental health services. Mental Health Services and systems planning in every respect are to be child centered, and family directed---this is what Medicaid Guidelines require. There is no child-centered family driven voice in this plan. Ultimately, this may be why instead of the discussion being centered on what is in the best interests of foster children; it is focused on sustaining and monitoring a fractured paradigm of care, using dangerous psychiatric drugs in lieu of humane, ethical psycho-social and cognitive behavioral mental health treatments for children whose mental health care is paid for by Medicaid.

Seems to me some of those billions in off-label marketing fines could be spent to provide evidence based therapies for foster kids, instead of allowing the off-label Medicaid fraud to victimize them...
ineffective for treating aggression

“Or just don’t do it. We know that behavioral treatments can work very well with many patients.”  Dr. Johnny Matson

photo credit 

Lucky Number 7 and Quack Master Jack

Quack Master Jack

My son Isaac, at the age of seven, was diagnosed with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. This is a neurological condition that is number seven on a list of medical conditions which need to be excluded in order to diagnose schizophrenia; because it has the same symptoms.  He was diagnosed by a neurologist from an EEG, just prior to Quack Master Jack first "treating" my son for seven months at CSTC.

Three sevens isn't that supposed to be lucky?! 

Being educated, even though I'm not a Dorktor like Quack Master Jack, I knew that schizophrenia is a diagnosis of exclusion.  I also knew that when Quack Master Jack diagnosed my son with schizophrenia, that my son's Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and early childhood trauma were ignored by 'treatment providers' and always had been---not excluded or treated with recommended treatments; but  ignored.  Quack Master Jack ultimately excluded Temporal Lobe Epilepsy by removing the diagnosis from my son's Medical Record, a crime.

All of my son's symptoms can in fact be caused by Left Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Quack Master Jack used my son, because research needs to be done, there are drugs to sell and Practice Parameters which an evidence-base must be developed to support and validate "scientifically" if not ethically... How lucky can one boy be!  Lucky triple number 7 and chosen to be in Quack Master Jack's TEOSS Drug Trials!

I'm not a dorktor, I'm just a MadMother; I'm thinking how in the hell could this be considered ethical; let alone be publicly funded?! It sure as hell isn't ethical; it doesn't comply with the Nuremberg Code! Since when is it permissible for a NIMH funded 'research psychiatrist' without any legal authority, to effectively strip a parent of their parental rights; strip my child in distress of his Human Rights; so that he can be used as a human guinea pig in neuroleptic drug trials?  My son was repeatedly traumatized and ultimately disabled by Jon McClellan who repeatedly told me I had no say in what he was doing to my son.  He informed me that telling me anything was a COURTESY since he did not need my approval or consent.  Jon McClellan was the only one who provided approval and consent to the unethical treatment of my son.

"in psychiatry, curing symptoms reigns suppreme (sic) over a collaborative approach. Parents who objected to medical treatment they would see as at best ill informed and at worst impaired themselves."  This is a quote from one of Quack Master Jack's former professors... The obvious flaw in this convoluted reasoning, and "professional opinion"; is that it implies that no one has the right to refuse psychiatric treatment--period.  Considering the fact that the drugs do not cure, or even treat the symptoms---for the vast majority of people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, it is an insane justification for what was done to my son.  The drugs caused a hell of a lot of trauma, and induced iatrogenic diseases as they are well known to do...

How lucky can one boy get!

via NAMI/NYC:

How to determine if a 'physical' illness is causing what looks like a 'mental' illness. 

by Ronald J Diamond M.D. 

University of Wisconsin Department of Psychiatry 

Written and Revised (1/28/96)

(It is the 'dream' of everyone with a 'mental' illness, and their families, that the illness, can be 'cured'. Dr. Diamond is one of the most caring doctors I have met. The following is a paper he wrote for 'non medical mental health professionals' to help them determine if someone presenting with a psychiatric illness has other physical illnesses and/or a physical illness that is 'causing' the mental illness that may have been missed by others. I have, albeit awkwardly, rephrased (redited and shortened) the original (better) paper to be of relevance to families of and people with neurobiological disorders ("NBD" formerly known as 'mental illness" )

The idea is that doctors should, but often don't look for other physical illnesses in someone with NBD. Armed with the following info, you can start to look for the illness yourself, or at least insist the doctor do it. -This should not substitute for a doctor's advice- dj jaffe, ed). 

 C. Medical Illnesses that Can Present as Psychosis

7. Temporal lobe epilepsy (or partial complex seizure disorder)





4-13-2012
NOTE:
I used Jaffe as a source as a JOKE more than anything else---it fit with the 'theme'---It is quite unusual to find anything put out by Jaffe that resembles accurate information.  As for his comment, "doctors should, but often don't look for other physical illnesses;"  the reality is much more sinister than this statement implies.  Other causes are not being excluded properly before labeling a person as having schizophrenia; the fucking geniuses who diagnose schizophrenia and treat patients often medically neglect the iatrogenic; e.g. PHYSICIAN caused /AVOIDABLE, neurological, cognitive, metabolic and cardiovascular diseases they acquire as a result.   My son has had one EKG in seven years, The manufacturer of one of the drugs he takes recommendeds an EKG be done ANNUALLY; but since I am not a DORKTOR, I can't order one...or force his DORKTORS to order it.  They also do not think it is important to order the neurological work up my son should have.  You'd think it would be important: fully assessing the actual of condition of a real live guinea pig...

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy is thought to be caused by Traumatic Brain Injury--My son was the victim of violent assault at the age of three while in foster care.  Quack Master Jack knew of this trauma and recorded in Isaac's medical record that the crime had been reported to CPS as required by law...