I was prescribed psych medicine at 5 years old, can I push legal action?
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I was prescribed psych medicine at 5 years old, can I push legal action?
I am currently 19 years old. I am told when I
was 4 years old I was behavioral, talking too
fast and too many topics in one sentence, and
would hit myself. I agree I was a bit troubled,
but I feel that my medicine while a bit helpful
has screwed my mind up in the long run and has
caused severe emotional trauma. I don’t know if
this is professional or not , but I feel taken
advantage of, I had no say in this and was too
young to understand. I want to take legal
action on this. It was a Creston ,Iowa children
clinic.
My parents okayed it , but they never tried
hard enough to raise me right and my behavior
became worse. I believe theoretically I may
have never needed the medicine in the first
place and that in time it would have gone away.
But puting me on psych medicine that messes
with brain chemistry on a five year old
currently developing is unprofessional and lead
to screwing me up. These medications could have
killed me. I talk to this with my mother and
she says I don’t know anything because I wasn’t
there, but when anyone close to me agrees, even
family members, she still says that same thing,
they don’t know anything because they weren’t
there.
I just wanted here to admit she messed up, but
she refused. Can I push legal action against
all involved? Who prescribed it, who suggested,
and my mother who accepted it?
Asked on October 30, 2019 under Malpractice Law, Iowa
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 5 years ago | Contributor
You can try to assert a malpractice case against the doctor who prescribed it, but to win such a case, you would need medical evidence (e.g. testimony from a psychiatrist who has examined you) that the medicine harmed you and also that it was negligent, or unreasonably careless, to have prescribed it for you based on what was known then (i.e. based on the state of medical knowledge, your symptoms at the time, etc.). That is, you'd have to be able to prove not just the harm done but that no reasonable doctor would have prescribed it at the time, and you need medical expert testimony to do that.
Normally it would be too late (15 years) to bring this claim, but since you only recently (1 year) became an adult and so able to bring a claim on your own behalf, you should still be able to assert it.
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