Mental Health Screening Skewed For Poor Children

According to a New York Times story by Duff Wilson, entitled Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics, Mental Health Screening practices default to prescribing psychiatric drugs four times more often for children covered by Medicaid.  Wilson writes: “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.”

This is just another example of just how arbitrary and dangerous Mental Health Screening practices are.  To me it is unconscionable to allow an industry to drug disadvantaged children like animals as a social solution to normal adolescent behavior.

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