Antipsychotic drugs prescribed to as many as one in seven patients with dementia at nursing homes increase the risk of death and are not approved for such uses, a government audit has found.
Drugs such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon are “potentially lethal” to many of the patients getting them and in many cases, completely unnecessary and unneeded.
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.
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.
Detroit — A mother accused of medical neglect for refusing to give her daughter a prescribed drug had authority to halt treatment, court files indicate. The “informed consent” form signed by Maryanne Godboldo, who sparked a debate over parents’ rights when her daughter was removed from her care March 25, authorized her to give her daughter, Ariana, the antipsychotic drug Risperdal…The document, signed by the mother on behalf of her minor child, says, “I understand that I will not be forced to take this medication and that I can stop taking it at anytime. I also understand that discontinuation of prescribed medication without consultation with my doctor could cause my condition to worsen.”
“I think that document proves our case,” said Godboldo’s lawyer, Wanda Evans. “She understood she had a right to stop giving the medication. If you sign an informed consent that says you can stop, and you stop, you did the right thing, and CPS (Child Protective Services) is just being nasty.”
All you knew about prescription drugs were creepy ads in a JAMA at the doctor’s office with a lot of fine print. Even if you knew the name of a drug, you’d never ask your doctor for it because that would be self-diagnosing and cheeky for a patient.
Flash forward to the late 1990s when direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising, drug Web sites and online drug sales came on board, and self-diagnosing and demanding pills has become medicine-as-usual for the doctor/patient encounter.
The DTC/Web perfect storm didn’t just sell drugs like Claritin, Prozac and the Purple Pill, it sold the diseases to go with them like seasonal allergies, GERD and depression. It sold risk of diseases like heart events for which you’d take a statin like Lipitor, osteoporosis for which you’d take a bone drug like Boniva and asthma attacks for which you’d use a second asthma drug like Advair. Of course, by the very definition of prevention, you didn’t know if the drugs were working but you weren’t paying out of pocket anyway so what the hay…