National Center for Youth Law | Mental Health Archives

Mental Health

Our collective failure to provide children and adolescents appropriate and effective mental health services has tragic consequences on their ability to succeed in school, form healthy relationships, and thrive as adults. The National Center for Youth Law works to expand access to appropriate mental health services for low-income children and to limit dangerous practices such as the overuse of psychotropic medications on children in foster care.

Campaigns

Ensuring Adequate Oversight for the Safe Administration of Psychotropic Medications to Youth in Foster Care - Missouri

June 15, 2017

NCYL is partnering with Children’s Rights, and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics to ensure Missouri enacts policies and practices that reduce the risk of harm to the children in its custody.

Reducing the Over-Medication of Children and Youth in Foster Care - California

December 21, 2016

California foster children are being prescribed dangerous and unnecessary doses of psychotropic medications. Often the drugs are used as chemical restraints, rather than for medically accepted purposes. Over-medicated children face serious, life-long damage to their health, including morbid obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular damage. Foster youth…

Implementing a System of Home and Community-Based Mental Health Services - Washington

December 21, 2016

This campaign has worked to establish and implement of a system that focuses on intensive home and community-based mental health services for all Medicaid-eligible children under the age of 21 in Washington State.

Latest News

Missouri sued over psychotropic drugs for foster care kids - KSDK

June 15, 2017

Attorneys for Children’s Rights, the National Center for Youth Law and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics say the lawsuit is the first of its kind nationwide that focuses only on psychotropic drugs given to foster children.…

Chemical straitjackets: Lawsuit claims Missouri foster kids prescribed too many meds - KSMU Ozarks Public Radio

June 14, 2017

Two national child advocacy organizations have filed a federal lawsuit against the Missouri Department of Social Services, alleging that children in the state’s foster care system are over-prescribed psychotropic medications with little oversight.…

Class-Action Lawsuit Alleges Missouri Failed to Monitor Psychotropic Drugs Prescribed to Foster Youth - Chronicle of Social Change

June 13, 2017

A boy in Missouri’s foster care system known as M.B. was placed on six psychotropic drugs at once by the age of 12. During his two and half years in care, M.B.was placed in eight different placements and was prescribed a dizzying array of powerful…

State agencies sued over use of psychotropic drugs in foster children - Missourian

June 13, 2017

A 12-year-old girl from Columbia is one of five children representing Missouri’s 13,000 children in foster care in a class-action lawsuit filed Monday. The suit alleges that the Missouri Department of Social Services and its Children’s Division have looked the other way while powerful psychotropic…

Class-Action Suit Targets Missouri’s Use of Psychotropic Drugs on Kids in Foster Care - Riverfront Times

June 12, 2017

Missouri kids in foster care are far too likely to be doped up with too many prescription drugs, at too young an age and with too little information given to foster parents.…