Tag Archives: drugging children

Mother battles Michigan over daughter’s medication

Frustration over her physically impaired daughter’s medical care led Maryanne Godboldo to lash out at what she considered state interference and into a 12-hour standoff when Detroit police came to take the girl away.

When it ended, the unemployed mother was in handcuffs; her daughter placed in a psychiatric hospital for children.

Godboldo now is locked in a bitter battle with Michigan’s Department of Human Services over her right to determine whether the girl should continue taking the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal and the government’s responsibility to look after the child’s welfare.

Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter released as parents, state wrangle over her medical care

Maryanne Godboldo’s supporters will gather today for a reunion party at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit.

They’re celebrating the fact that Godboldo’s 13-year-old daughter — at the center of a struggle between her parents and the state over her medical care — was released Friday from a medical facility in Northville into her aunt’s care.

Godboldo, who has garnered significant community support, says she has the right to determine her daughter’s care and had been weaning her off a prescribed psychotropic drug in favor of holistic treatments.

Detroit mother’s heroism sends message to all parents: Say “no” to child drugging

The story of the Detroit mother, Maryanne Godboldo, undergoing a police siege on her home after refusing to give her daughter a psychotropic drug has set off a national outcry. Many facts not only vindicate her defiance but point the finger squarely at the correct villains: the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries.

As a recap, on March 24 a Children’s Protective Services (CPS) case worker petitioned to remove Maryanne Godboldo’s 13-year-old daughter from her care and place her in state custody. Only two weeks on the assignment (scarcely knowing the girl), the case worker claimed the mother was medically neglecting her child by taking her off Risperdal – a highly toxic antipsychotic drug.

Children Exploited for Profit Using Fictitious Mental Disorders

We’re ashamed that exploitation of children for profit was once tolerated in America: such as children as young as five shackled to machines while working 16-hour days in factories, or black children auctioned and sold as slaves. Yet future generations will look back on our era too with shame: a time when labeling kids with fictitious mental disorders and hooking them on drugs was a multi-billion dollar business.

About 10 percent of U.S children – over five million – are said to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a mental illness treated with drugs. A recent study blows a wide hole in that myth.

The hidden tyranny: children diagnosed and drugged for profit

Thomas Edison, one of the world’s most prolific inventors, was kicked out of school at an early age as his teacher lost patience with his persistent questions and wandering mind. Where would we be now if his creative spirit had been numbed by prescription drugs? Albert Einstein, father of modern physics, was a quiet child who kept his distance from his peers. He resented the rote learning methods enforced in school and was labeled a foolish day dreamer. Imagine if he had been medicated into conformity. Winston Churchill, the great statesman and orator, had an independent and rebellious nature as a youth and was often in trouble. Surely he would have been deemed ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) by today’s psychiatric standards. Frederick Douglass, one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement (and a blood relative of Umar R. Abdullah-Johnson, quoted above) began defying the rules for blacks when he was a child. And the list goes on.