Reuters via Medscape: among allegations charged in an April lawsuit by the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law, the National Center for Youth Law, and the Immigration Clinic of the University of California at Davis vs the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (◄wik pg) are that
Immigrant children are being routinely and forcibly given a range of psychotropic drugs at U.S. government-funded youth shelters to manage their trauma after being detained and in some cases separated from parents…
Children held at facilities such as the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas [specializing in services for children and youths with behavioral and emotional problems] are almost certain to be administered the drugs, irrespective of their condition, and without their parents' consent…
...Taking multiple psychotropic drugs at the same time can seriously injure children, according to the filing, which highlights the need for oversight to prevent medications being used as "chemical straight jackets," rather than treat actual mental health needs.
ORR-run centers unilaterally administer the drugs to children in disregard of laws in Texas and other states that require either a parent's consent or a court order, the filing said…
All drugs involve risks of adverse effects, including psychotropics properly prescribed, including serious and longterm effects that can arise even with one properly prescribed drug supervised by a careful physician. Youngsters at Shiloh reported administration of up to nine different pills in the morning, six in the evening, being told they would remain detained if they refused drugs, and being held down and given injections when they refused. One mother in contact with her daughter mother said the child received such powerful anti-anxiety medications she collapsed several times. Another said Shiloh had contact information for herself and other family members but none were consulted about drugs administered to her daughter.
If these allegations prove true, there is a horrifying irony in this occurring at a time when mainstream American medicine and the federal government claim to be waging a war against abuse of prescription drugs because of harm to patients, overdose deaths and suicides.
It would be horrifying without qualification that pharmaceutical distributors are supplying chemical “management” means to dentention centers in mass-administration amounts, and WORSE that “healthcare”-trained personnel are wielding those means.
It’s hard to know whether to believe suggestions here and there in media that ORR and ICE have taken stepped up federal directives as an opportunity for a fell sweep of “undesirable” youngsters across the board. But chemical silencing unquestionably adds to that possibility even if on accidental basis.
Further reading:
As of the President’s June 20 signing of the order to end separation of families, more than 2,300 youngsters had been taken away.
...The American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American Academy of Nursing, (AAN), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American College of Physicians (ACP) are among the organizations that called on Trump to end the separations immediately.
Physicians have detailed the physical and psychologic effects that detention and separation from their families can have on children...
...to which add drug effects, and how that might create added trouble if/when these kids actually need medications to try to come back from damages they sustained, physically and mentally.
...Pediatrician Julie Linton, MD, cochair of the AAP immigrant health special interest group, told Medscape Medical News [that for] some of these children who have been exposed to traumatizing circumstances there will be lifelong effects...
Pediatrician and democratic congressional candidate from Washington's 8th congressional district, Kim Schrier, MD, told Medscape Medical News that these separations deprive children of the kind of comfort and guidance critical to condition developing brains to cope with the ultimate stressful environment.
Children default to a "fight or flight" mentality, when the brain focuses only on survival, Schrier explained. When the brain does not have the chance to develop coping mechanisms, fight or flight can become the norm.
"These are children fleeing violence in their own countries," she pointed out. They survive a dangerous journey "only to be torn from their parents in a foreign country where they don't speak the language, if they're even verbal yet."
Sarah Vinson, MD, a member of the APA council on communications, said ending the separation policy immediately won’t protect victims from long-term impacts.
"Children are trying to figure out how the world works, who they are in the world, and how things operate. [Such] a traumatic experience — where they are separated from their caretakers — it has an effect on their self-concept, how they relate to other people, and on their mental health.
We know that children who have experienced traumatic events are at increased risk for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders. Childhood trauma has implications for adults in the physical and mental health space as well."
It’s not clear yet how effectively parents and children can be reunited, nor even whether resources have yet been ear-marked far less deployed to do so. But these families and any community in which they and members subsequently live, will be dealing with the health consequences far into the foreseeable future.