In Treating NY's Developmentally Disabled, Potent Drugs and Few Rules

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In Treating Disabled, Potent Drugs and Few Rules

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/nyregion/potent-pills-few-rules-in-states-tre\

atment-of-the-disabled.html?hp>

By DANNY HAKIM

Patients in state-run homes for the developmentally disabled receive

high doses of antipsychotics for behavior control, critics say, and the

state is taking steps toward change.

Something was happening to 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.

In response to questions from The New York Times, state officials said

they would investigate how the consent form was changed and whether

Strignano was receiving the appropriate dose of medication.

" 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....

Psychologists who have worked inside the system describe a culture in

which the drugs are used to control the disruptive behavior of the

developmentally disabled --- people with conditions like autism, Down

syndrome and cerebral palsy --- an approach increasingly discredited in

the field....