Over-medicated

I adopted my son from foster care when he was 10 years old. He arrived in my home with a list of diagnoses long enough to rival Santa's naughty and nice list. The list of medications my son was on wasn't much shorter. It's a sad state of affairs for some kids in foster care. Even if they're lucky enough to have wonderful foster homes and social workers (as my son did) they lose the advantage of any one person who knows their history and can strongly advocate for their needs. Subsequently, there's a distinct possibility for kids to be over-diagnosed and over-medicated. Does it happen all the time? Absolutely not. But it happens often enough to be a concern, and I know that it happened to my son.

The concern about over-medication doesn't start and end with kids in foster care, however. A relatively new series of medications are classified as atypical antipsychotics. The drugs were originally indicated for conditions such as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. However, as their other effects were noted, it's become common practice to prescribe these medications for other issues such as anger management. In fact, from 1999 to 2007, the number of nursing home residents on antipsychotics rose more than 6%.

While effective, these medications can have side effects including obesity, diabetes, tardive dyskinesia (a tic disorder) and sedation.