Controversy in Mass. is flaring over policies to screen kids on Medicaid for psychiatric disorders. Brought on by a law suit resulting in an expansion of Medicaid services, some worry that pediatricians screening for anxiety disorders, ADHD, depression, and other disorders, leads to over use of medications for young children. The debate falls within a larger issue of medicating children, and then of medicating foster children. From Oregon to New York to Florida
there are reports that foster children are four to eight times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic drugs than non-institutionalized children.
