Court oversees giving Risperdal to a child

A local grandma wrote this letter to Tamara (Tami) Ellis, a local parenting coordinator with dubious credentials:

I wonder if you are aware that the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency has decided that D. H. does not belong in its MHSA program. After seven years they are only now making that decision, only now after he has brought thousands and thousands of dollars into the health agency’s coffers; and only now as an audit is being conducted into the use of MHSA funds! He never did belong in the program for the Seriously Mentally Ill. D. is Asperger: a condition, neither a mental disorder nor a mental illness (half D.’s extended family is Asperger), yet you kept him in that program unnecessarily and suffering for seven long years.

You are neither a doctor nor a lawyer. Yet despite your ignorance and your specious credentials you were able to convince the Family Law Court judges that you knew what was best for D. You saw him once four years ago and that was all you needed: D. should be on drugs. Why? The anti-psychotic drug Risperdal is for psychotics: schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and the extreme moods of autism. Risperdal made D. very sick, but that didn’t matter to you.

Janssen, the drug’s manufacturer, said the ‘treatment’ should be discontinued, that ‘D. was having all the side effects (except the sexual ones, being only a little boy) exhibited by 10 percent of all users.’ But no, you knew what was best for D. and you convinced Robert Brown, M.D. (who should have known better), the lawyers (your friend Jennifer Gray), Bret Johnson, and the judges of the Family Law Court, that your verdict was the only one.

You, Tami, have denied D. his childhood. You harmed him and you harmed his father. Indeed, you have harmed D.’s entire family.

May the shame of your actions be always with you!

I do resent the suggestion that Asperger is a condition that needs to be treated with a drug. It has been dropped from the DSM-5, as the current psychiatric consensus is that it is not a disorder. Even if it were a disorder, it is crazy to try to treat it with this drug. Judges and other court personnel have no business meddling with such dubious treatments.