Child welfare doctors and case managers routinely failed to complete legally
required treatment plans, share information or properly document the prescribing
of powerful psychiatric drugs for children, according to a new state study of 6-
and 7-year-olds medicated in state care.

One of the 268 children was Gabriel Myers. The troubled 7-year-old, medicated
with an adult antidepressant known to cause suicide in children, hanged
himself in April in his Margate foster home.

But the state study, which documents how many times caseworkers and doctors
followed child welfare rules and laws, shows that it would be a mistake to blame
Gabriel's death solely on the drug, Symbyax, said Florida's drug czar, William
Janes.

''It wasn't just the medications,'' said Janes, who is on a committee
investigating ways to prevent cases like Gabriel's. ``It was the system and his
world. His environment just collapsed on him. And there was no one there to
really put their arms around him.''

More here

Marc Caputo

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