California's Crisis: Children and Psychotropics in Foster Care System

With alarming frequency, foster and health care providers are turning to a risky but convenient remedy to control the behavior of thousands of troubled kids: numbing them with psychiatric drugs that are untested on and often not approved for children.  Nearly 1 out of every 4 adolescents in California foster care system is being drugged , 3 times the rate for adolescents nationwide.   Even more alarming is that of the tens of thousands prescribed psychiatric drugs,  nearly 60% were prescribed powerful antipsychotics which have been documented by 72 international drug regulatory warnings to cause heart problems, stroke, diabetes, convulsions and sudden death.      According to IMS Health, the leading vendor of all US prescribing data, nearly 9 million children currently being prescribed psychiatric drugs—with more than 1 million are under the age of five.    Our guest, Sonya Muhammad's holds a Master's degree in marriage, family, and child counseling from Pacific Oaks College, in Pasadena, California.  As a marriage, family, and child counselor for more than twenty years, Ms. Muhammad has provided counseling services to children of all ages, varied cultures, and varied socioeconomic status, as well as, their parents and other concerned persons.