Research Articles

Keeton, Carole. (2004). Forgotten children. Texas Comptroller.

“Concerns about the medications foster children receive have been raised in other states. In Minnesota, for instance, a University of Minnesota study for Saint Louis County found that nearly 35 percent of the county’s foster children were receiving psychotropic medication, compared to 15 percent of the general population of children.” Keeton, Carole. (2004). “Forgotten children.” Texas Comptroller, 199.

This book’s main focus is on foster care children in Texas and their lack of importance to receive quality care, including mental care. Though her focus is elsewhere, she touches on the topic of overmedicating our youth, especially foster care children, simply to make it easier to care for them. Keeton says that many Texas foster children are heavily medicated on psychiatric drugs, often not tested for children, which leave them tired and dreary and easier to care for. She also uses a handful of individual testimonies from individuals who have adopted children from foster care and found that their children have been misdiagnosed, and/or over treated for their disorder. This source is not going to help me find a great amount of evidence for my research paper but it does help me gain a different view of my topic and aids in the answer to my research question.

“In just five years, the annual number of children placed on these powerful mind-altering

drugs has increased by an alarming 528%” Statewide Advocacy Council. (2003). The psychopathic drugging of Florida’s Medicaid children. Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Florida, pg. 1.

This report focused in on Florida’s rise in medicated foster care children. It holds useful information backed by research conducted by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. It portrays the massive rise in children on Medicaid receiving psychopathic drugs.  It does throw a lot of numbers and statistics out, which can be relatively helpful for my paper, but it also addresses the negatives of using such drugs and gives it a human opinion as well. Unfortunately the length of this document is not extensive. I will be able to use useful information from this document and use it as another useful backbone to proving my answer to my research question. This article and the prior one also made me think about possibly changing my research topic and focusing more on children in foster care then all children in the United States.