Disability Scoop reports today on the awful story of an autistic child killed at a group home:
Denis Maltez, who had autism, died in 2007 at age 12 after being restrained by staff members employed by the group home where he lived in Miami. An autopsy determined that he was experiencing serotonin syndrome, a condition where the body produces too much serotonin, the chemical that regulates a person’s mood. The syndrome can be caused by a combination of psychiatric medications.
….
“This is a clear case of a 12-year-old child who perished because he was given a lethal combination of off-label, dangerous, anti-psychotic drugs to control his behavior without appropriate consent, administration and supervision,” said Howard Talenfeld, Quesada’s [the boy’s mother] attorney. “Tragically, this case is one of many cases where foster children and developmentally disabled children are given powerful drugs to control their behavior instead of utilizing appropriate behavioral interventions.”
With echoes of the inappropriate ‘care’ dolled out to Jesse Moores, this seems to me another example of a young person with special needs treated with scant thought or care. Its sickening that there seem to be so many of these stories on both sides of the Atlantic recently. I sincerely believe that there needs to be an _international_ coalition of voices – made up primarily of autistic people and their immediate families – to offer oversight on how autistic people are treated. This cannot be allowed to continue. Closing down homes, jailing perpetrators etc _after_ the fact is all well and good. We need something proactive not reactive.
Left Brain Right Brain 
This is just horrible. This week has been particularly bad–or is it just that the news has been particularly good at getting these stories out?
Once again, this makes me think of my boys…There has to be change. The perception of autism needs to change. Meaning that the world/society..needs to see people instead of diagnosis or symptoms. Human beings. This was a horribly sad story..How his family must hurt.
Saddenned to hear this. Often we are being told about avoidable problems. This one caused another death, pretty serious.
I have to agree about being on the proactive side, somehow. I would only have half baked utopian suggestions that people would say are incomplete or too fantastic. (or be classed as socialist.)
It would be interesting to know exactly what the circumstances were,and why this boy was given these drugs.Was he given then as a chemical straight jacket,or were they actually doing him some good? Let’s assume he was taking SSRIs,one of the more common causes of this,and a class of drugs I have ample experience with.
There are serious cognitive problems very similar to Alzheimer’s or dementia in ASDs other than Asperger’s/HFA.I know,I have been seriously disabled by them my entire life.At their worst,you go out wandering in a state of semiconciousness with no way to communicate who you are or what you are doing.If you are lucky you will come around hours later,and feel like you have just woken up from hypnosis.
But the rest of the time you have less severe symptoms,but they are all just like Alzheimer’s or dementia.They are one of the main reasons more seriously disabled autistics are unable to work or go to school.I am sure if more nonverbal autistic children,were able to talk,but otherwise had severe autism (The situation I have been in most of my life.),they would say something very similar.
There is quite a bit of evidence,that does show these symptoms are caused,in part,by insufficient serotonin levels.Exactly what the mechanism for this is,is a cause of much debate.
SSRIs do not improve mood in autism.What they do,is improve cognitive function and mental clarity.The problem is,they do not do this very long. Increasingly higher doses are needed to get the same level of improvement.Eventually they stop working entirely,and then you start again with another SSRI.I was on this treadmill for ten years,and eventually gave up.It clearly takes a higher level of functioning than this boy was capable of,to stay on a regimen of them with any success.
Even so,SSRIs,and antipsychotics are little more than a band-aid that do not address the underlying cause of the problems.