Dead Wrong: How Psychiatric Drugs Can Kill Your Child Page #6

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than making somebody into somebody that

- they're permanently scarred.

- Like a zombie.

- Yes, yes, they're a permanent zombie.

What could be worse than that?

Tell me a disease that you

would rather have than that.

The situation with foster

care is truly horrible.

As I soon found out, not only are

thousands of children drugged every year,

but sometimes, the results are fatal.

I flew to Florida to meet with

Michael Freedland, an attorney

who represents foster kids

damaged by psychiatric drugs,

including 16-year-old

Emilio Villamar.

Good morning, Celeste. It's very nice to

meet you. I'm glad you were able to make it.

- Nice to meet you, Michael.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for having me here.

- My pleasure.

How common is the use of psychiatric

drugs in the foster care system?

The drugging of children in foster care

I understand is way too common occurrence

because it's a simple fix.

Foster mom or foster dad or

social worker says we have a child

who won't sleep through the night or a

child who's waking up with night terrors

or a child who's misbehaving or redirecting

their frustration on another child

or using their hands to hurt not help.

And instead of sitting down

and working with that child,

taking the time to say, "What's

causing them to act out?"

"No. We're not going to worry about

that, we have a fix. Give them this pill."

They're using these poor children

who are coming from incredibly

difficult environments as guinea pigs.

With no one to protect them.

With absolutely no one to protect them.

And that's why they prey on them

because there's not a mom

or dad there that can say,

"Hey no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to let you

test this untested, unproven drug on my child."

So let's test it on children that

don't have someone to be their voice.

Oh my goodness.

You represent the mother of Emilio Villamar.

Can you tell us something about his story?

Just like your son, Emilio

was a vibrant 16-year-old boy,

he played water polo, excelled

at school, had lots of friends,

came from a great family,

everything was wonderful in his life.

And he had a bad

situation at school one day

and Mom got worried because he

wasn't acting like himself and

Mom, being a very concerned

mom, took him to see a doctor.

And the doctor, without really any kind

of diligence or any kind of thought,

put him a on varying combination of different

incredibly powerful antipsychotic drugs

over the next 12 months leading to a

cardiac event that led to his death.

My goodness. How many drugs was he on?

Over the 12 months that

this physician treated him

he was on 17 different

drugs at different times

and different dosages and

in different combinations.

Oh my goodness.

- And those drugs killed him.

- Right.

I believe that. I believe

that's what happened to Matthew.

Not knowing all the

facts of Matthew's story

there's no question in my mind

that the drugs played a role.

I mean these drugs are dangerous,

they're dangerous for

adults, let alone children,

and they're being prescribed recklessly,

they're being administered recklessly,

they're being promoted even more recklessly.

Michael, thank you so

much for what you're doing

and for letting me come in

here and speak with you today.

It's my pleasure. Again, sorry

for what you had to go through.

I can only hope that what you're doing

saves other families from having

to go through that same tragedy.

I hope so.

Matthew's got you now.

- Hey, hey, look.

- Helloooo. Say hi.

When he started taking that medication

it was like something dark came over him.

There was definitely a difference within a month

there of kind of just, just a huge wall went up.

He wasn't really talking a

lot, kind of tight-lipped.

Just becoming more detached. He became

more isolated, wasn't at school a whole lot.

He was skipping school a lot more.

He was losing a lot of weight.

He spent way too much time downstairs

in the basement, you know, watching TV.

Doesn't want to do anything.

We had come up to the door and asked

him if he wanted to go to a movie

or go out to lunch or do

something to get out of the house

and he was very, just very short

and didn't want to do anything.

He told me to get out of his room and close

his door and he'd never said that to me before.

But it's like, he wasn't

comfortable in his own skin.

It was like he had 50 cups of coffee

and he was starting to get spooked

about "Who's here?" and "Am I

safe?" and all of these things that

were almost like playing mind

games on him, if you will.

He just didn't feel like he

was in his right mind anymore.

He didn't understand what was happening,

he thought this medication

was supposed to be helping him.

And I remember seeing, recognizing the

look on his face as, it's hard to describe,

that nothing is okay, you

know, there is no future.

Just complete despair

and sadness in his eyes.

In the last few weeks,

I've had to face the fact

that all this drugging of children

isn't happening by accident.

The drug advertising is

everywhere and it's obvious.

But the real surprise was to see

how heavily psychiatric treatment

is being pushed in our schools,

right under parents' noses.

This wasn't the case

for Matthew obviously,

but I do know that they are

starting to screen children in school

for mental problems or things that they

perceive to be mental problems anyway.

Sheila, you have experience

with that, don't you?

My son was seven and he was in school

and I was getting a lot of phone calls

from the school about his behavior.

So they did this checklist on him and I

didn't know anything about this checklist

but I, I took it home and I had to fill

it out and it was all on his behavior.

"Does your son get sad? Does your

son?" just simple little questions

that any child would

do, any child would do.

So based on that checklist that I

filled out on my son and they filled out,

they diagnosed him off of a

checklist that he had ADHD.

And I was devastated, I was like

"Oh my god, my, what does this mean?"

"My son's mentally

ill? He's only seven."

You had no experience with

that beforehand, right?

No, no. My son was very talkative,

he started talking at ten months

and he was all personality.

And I could remember sending him

off for his first day of school.

I have the pictures. He was

so excited to go to school.

but then all of a sudden, when they

got him on this behavioral chart,

he hated going to school.

And he came home and he was upset and

he just didn't like school, he hated it.

And at seven years old, to hate

school, that's a crime actually.

And then they said, "You really

need to try him on ADHD medication."

And I was like, "I don't want

to do that, I'm not doing it."

You know, the bottom line is, I had no

idea how subjective that checklist was.

If I had known, if somebody had said,

"This is just our opinion, it's

not really a medical diagnosis,"

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