Inmates at juvenile detention facilities across the U.S. are being given anti-psychotic drugs intended for sufferers of serious mental disorders, and often without the proper diagnosis.
A report by Youth Today, based on surveys of 16 different state juvenile offender programs, found that drugs meant for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are being used to treat problems that are far less serious, and as common as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.
Some critics say that the improper use of drugs has grown as a replacement of physical restraints, which detention centers are now prohibited from using on unruly inmates.
“Fifty years ago, we were tying kids up with leather straps, but now that offends people, so instead we drug them,” says Robert Jacobs, a former Florida psychologist and lawyer who is now based in Australia. “We cover it up with some justification that there is some medical reason, which there is not.”
Compounding the worry, 34 states declined to participate in the survey, raising the possibility that they could not demonstrate that they were recording or even monitoring the drugs being given to youth offenders, Youth Today said.
Some medical professionals don’t think that the use of anti-psychotics is a problem.
“It prepares youth so they can respond to treatment,” says LeAdelle Phelps, an adolescent psychologist and former juvenile facility official. “By reducing aggression and by having calming, soothing effects,” the anti-psychotics make residents “more malleable.”
Critics dispute this claim and say that anti-psychotic drugs, which have side effects for adults, pose an added risk to teenagers, from weight gain to diabetes.
“There is a reasonable body of evidence that adolescents are more sensitive to the metabolic side effects,” said Mark Olfson, a clinical psychiatry professor at Columbia University .
