Florida Probes Doctor Of 7-Year-Old Suicide

Many of you are already aware of the awful case of a 7-year-old boy in Florida named Gabriel Myers who last month hanged himself in the shower of his foster home. The kid was chock-full of psych meds--Symbyax, Vyvanase and had recently been on Lexapro. Now a Florida state senator is calling on the State of Florida to investigate the prescribing psychiatrist both to determine what happened and, from a medical board angle, to determine if there were any violations of sound medical practices.

Already the State's Department of Children and Families has convened a working group to look into the agency's use of psych meds.

Over the last year or so, Florida has had in place a special monitoring program to catch potential overuse of psych meds in kids. The Miami Herald reports:

"Dr. Sohail Punjwani, who was treating Gabriel, had been red-flagged by the medication program every quarter that the list was kept, one of the administrators told The Miami Herald.

"Punjwani did not return calls from The Miami Herald for a comment."

While I'm pleased that this case seems to be turning into a major wake-up call along the lines of the Rebecca Riley case, this kind of attention is coming at too high of a price.