Excerpts:
Something was happening to Katie Strignano. After she was moved into a state-run group home, the 26-year-old woman, who is severely mentally retarded, started gaining weight, drooling, breaking out in pimples and pulling out her hair, leaving a bald spot the size of a softball on her head.
Her mother, Debra Strignano, suspected that someone had increased her daughter’s medication without her family’s consent.
When she asked for a copy of a consent form she had once signed for her daughter, she discovered it had been altered, tripling the daily dosage of Clonidine, which is used to control attention deficit disorder. The drug, and four others her daughter was taking, have myriad potential side effects, including rapid weight gain, skin rashes and drowsiness.
“Everything with them is, let’s sedate the kid instead of trying to solve the problem,” Ms. Strignano said. “They want to dope her up; they want her to sit there like she doesn’t exist.”
Tens of thousands of powerful pills created to treat serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia are given to developmentally disabled people in the care of New York State every day.
Read the Full Article Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/nyregion/potent-pills-few-rules-in-states-treatment-of-the-disabled.html