Tag Archives: mind-altering drugs

52% of foster kids are prescribed psych drugs—One of them is fighting back

At just 6 years of age, still grieving over the death of the only mother he had ever known, his foster mother, Giovan Bazan would receive the first of many psychiatric ‘diagnoses’ and drugs that would plague him for the next twelve years of his life. Moved from foster home to foster home, orphanages and other modes of state care, Giovan was stigmatized with a plethora of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs until the age of 18, when he could finally make his own medical decisions and quit. Now a child advocate working part time at the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) in Georgia, Giovan is on a mission: To get a full-time job with DFCS and help enact laws to combat the wholesale labeling and drugging of foster children. In the video below, Giovan tells his story and why he decided to fight back against the abuse of kids in foster care.

Adam Ant vows to become ‘political animal’ to rid world of anti-depressants

Adam Ant has spoken out against the use of anti-depressants which, according to the 80s pop icon, left him in “purgatory”. According to the singer they’re responsible for killing “the spirit” of people prescribed these “mind-altering drugs”. In order to tackle the issue, the 56-year-old believes he’ll have to become a “political animal”. In an interview with Music News, the singer, who has battled mental health problems and twice been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, explained his position: “I feel there is a very, very serious, serious problem in this country, or any country, with anti-depressants, and it affects everybody.

He continued: “It surrounds itself by being a taboo and by being a sense of guilt and by governments just kind of like phoning it in and giving people very, very strong mind-altering drugs, prescribed because they don’t kill you but they certainly kill the spirit and they kill your mentality.”

Concern over high medication rate among foster kids—Review of kids’ psych drugs urged

Giovan Bazan was 6 when a doctor first gave him medicine to treat his diagnosis of hyperactivity. Bazan admits he was unruly at the time. Perhaps it was because the only parent he had ever known, his foster mother since he was an infant, had just died. No one asked about that. Nor did anyone check years later to see that he was on a double dose of Ritalin when another physician, seeing a boy so mellowed out that he barely reacted, prescribed an antidepressant. “They start you on one thing for a problem, then the side effects mean you need a new medicine,” Bazan said. “As a foster kid, I’d go between all these doctors, caseworkers, therapists, and [it] seemed like every time there was a new drug to try me on.”

When he turned 18, Bazan elected to stop all medications. It turned out he didn’t need any of them.

Florida lawmakers pledge action on psychiatric drugs in foster care

Members of Florida’s Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee from both parties said the state needed to toughen laws and rules for prescribing psychiatric drugs to children in the wake of the hanging death of Gabriel Myers and an ongoing examination by a Department of Children and Families task force.