Seroquel, Geodon Tied To Death Of 3-Year-Old "Bipolar Child" In Kansas
This article in the Topeka Capital-Journal and what it describes are disgusting, so I’ll summarize: parents named tk and tk have a young 3-year-old daughter in Council Grove, Kansas, named Destiny. The parents are former drug addicts and both are diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The girl begins experiencing mood swings, bangs her head against a wall, tries suffocating a dog and so on. The parents take Destiny to a counselor, who presses them to take their daughter to a psychiatrist.
The parents do as instructed, taking their daughter to a 70-something psych doc who prescribes both Seroquel and Geodon to control Destiny, who weighs 37 pounds. The article doesn’t specify what diagnosis the child was given, but based upon the meds we’re in bipolar child country here. Eventually, the doctor ups the Seroquel dosage to 600 mgs. a day–yes, in a 3-year-old, 37 pound girl–and that’s the high end of adult dosages of the drug.
At some point in 2006, Destiny’s parents became uncomfortable with the dosage of drugs their daughter was getting and scheduled an appointment to get her weaned off meds. About that time, Destiny begins complaining of a stomachache, and when the pain gets too intense her parents take her to a small hospital. Destiny is diagnosed with a blocked colon and needs emergency surgery, which never gets performed because a doctor at the hospital wants to handle things there. By the time, she’s transported to Kansas City, it’s already too late. Destiny dies from fecal impactation.
The article identifies a blocked colon as a known side effect of Seroquel and Geodon. I was not able to find it identified in the Seroquel PI, but it is a known side effect of some of the atypical antipsychotics. See this 2002 case study of colon blockage and fecal impactation in Australian patients taking Clozaril.
While there could possibly be other causes of fecal impactation, in a 3-year-old you’d have to look at the meds she was taking, especially Serqoquel in an extremely high dose for a small child. An autopsy found she had antipsychotics in her in “concentrations considered therapeutic in adults.”
Her parents sued the doctors and hospital, but in late-2008 the lawyers handling their case walked away, likely due to the parents’ drug-using past (it never goes over well with juries). Meanwhile, the State of Kansas investigates the psychiatrist and finds that he violated state laws in treating Destiny and a few other children.
I don’t know what to say beyond the bare facts above, except to note that I am tired of this bipolar child crap. It’s killing kids and that ain’t right. Rebecca Riley and Destiny Hager and I’m sure there are more out there.
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