Photo & Artist Credits: Dan Fleuette & Sean Danconia News Story Photo Credit: New York Post Russell Kim Kennington’s presence inside the crime scene where Charlie Kirk was assassinated is not just a side detail; Kennington’s background deepens the public’s right to demand answers about what occurred at the Utah Valley University (UVU).  Thirty-eight year old Kennington of Pleasant Grove Utah sauntered into the taped-off crime scene at UVU crossing multiple layers of police tape, wearing a white lab coat, took random photographs and video of critical evidence, and ultimately was arrested on suspicion of obstruction of justice and criminal trespass. After a brief search, it appears that Kennington is not some random onlooker with a cell phone as his work and history sit squarely inside the psychiatric and mental reprogramming industry that already hovers over Utah’s behavioral-health landscape. Public profiles show that Kennington works as a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) technician at TMS Solutions, a company delivering brain-stimulation treatments often marketed as relief from depression and related conditions. Before that, Kennington is listed as having worked for years as an imaging clerk at Intermountain Healthcare and also as a U.S. Army combat medic, giving him a mix of medical, mental-health-adjacent, and technical experience that makes Kennington’s decision to enter an active homicide crime scene even more troubling.  While there is no public record that Kennington worked specifically in an Intermountain transgender-care psychiatric unit, his prior Intermountain employment means yet another figure with ties to Utah’s mental health system that also happens to be at the center of the Kirk death crime scene. Transcranial magnetic stimulation clamps a powerful electromagnet against a person’s skull and fires rapid pulses into the brain that are strong enough to force tiny electrical currents into targeted mood and behavior circuits. TMS is a medically authorized, heavily marketed psychiatric intervention with limited, questionable evidence of success but does have real risks. TMS is not a proven, reliable cure, and still under active scientific debate. What makes Kennington’s story even more concerning is how neatly it fits into a larger pattern where the psychiatric industry continually appears at the margins of death investigations, while simultaneously fighting efforts to fully test and disclose psychiatric-drug involvement. In Wyoming, during testimony on a Toxicology and Autopsy Transparency Act, a psychiatrist who actively promotes TMS treatment testified against requiring full blood testing for psychiatric drugs in suspicious deaths, opposing broader toxicology transparency when families and lawmakers were seeking stronger access to medication data. The message from that testimony was clear: keep certain drug information more difficult to obtain, even when the public is asking for full visibility into what is in a person’s system at the time of death to protect public safety. Repeatedly, the record shows of mass shootings, assassinations, and attempted assassinations, the lives of accused perpetrators are saturated with behavioral-health professionals and systems—from therapists and psychiatrists to care coordinators and program vendors—raising legitimate questions about how these same institutions shape treatment decisions before a tragedy and control information after it. A TMS technician with prior Intermountain employment slips into the heart of a political assassination crime scene, crossing police lines while Governor Cox and Sheriff Mike Smith make no mention, hold no news updates on the breach of security that occurred calling into question their role in this political assassination. Case after case, the people orbiting the accused are not just ordinary parents or neighbors; they are often behavioral-health “experts,” coordinators, or industry insiders who live and work inside the very systems that decide what treatment is provided, what information gets documented, and what information is later hidden behind privacy laws.  The pattern is not subtle. When people die—whether in a political assassination, a school/church shooting, or a contested in-custody death—the psychiatric industry keeps turning up at the crime scene, in the medical records, in the legislative chambers where laws are written about what can and cannot be tested or disclosed, and sometimes even in the family roles of the accused themselves. Yet at every step, the public has to fight for basic facts: who crossed the tape, what was in the blood, which drugs or treatments were in play, and who inside the behavioral-health system had both knowledge and responsibility.  Psychiatry and its satellite industries are not neutral bystanders; it is woven into the systems that shape how deaths are investigated, what is tested, and what the public is allowed to know—and when a TMS technician with prior Intermountain ties walks into the Kirk crime scene in a lab coat, it becomes one more data point in a disturbing, repeated pattern. Be the Voice for the Voiceless AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety. What you can do.  Sign the Petition calling for federal hearings! Donate! Every dollar you give is a powerful statement, a resounding declaration that the struggles of these families will no longer be ignored. Your generosity today will echo through generations, ensuring that the rights and well-being of children are fiercely guarded. Don’t let another family navigate this journey alone. Donate now and join us in creating a world where every child’s mind is nurtured, respected, and given the opportunity to thrive.  As a 501(c)3 organization, your donation to AbleChild is not only an investment in the well-being of vulnerable children but also a tax-deductible contribution to a cause that transcends individual lives.  

The Minnesota billion-dollar Medicaid fraud is about human failure. While the media currently is placing blame on failed vice-presidential candidate, Governor Tim Walz, this story is about an entire state apparatus that failed. That’s right. This is a story of humans paid to ensure that state and federal dollars were correctly spent…to be responsible stewards of the public treasury but whether by accident or intent failed miserably. The buck obviously ultimately falls with Walz as Governor of the State and, in light of statements made by state personnel, Walz may very well be singularly responsible for the billion-dollar Medicaid fraud and may face re-election repercussions and even civil or criminal lawsuits. Afterall, State employees accuse Walz of “systematically retaliating against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression and did his best to discredit fraud reports.” The state employees further report that “instead of partnership we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz.” These statements were posted on the social media site X, but no backup documentation was provided to support the damning statements. But AbleChild knows well that the Medicaid programs that have been frauded were administered by state employees. Somebody in the state – some human - was aware of the fraud in the numerous Medicaid programs very early on. There was no need to wait for whistleblowers within the frauded programs. State employees knew about the fraud so the question that needs to be asked is who had oversight? Who was responsible for ensuring that the Medicaid money (50% state funds and 50% federal funds) paid out was going to legitimate programs? Who in the Department of Health Services was boots on the ground, ensuring that the Medicaid “providers” actually existed and were legitimately providing services? In January of this year, AbleChild wrote about fraud in the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) treatment program in Minnesota. The program was created in 2017 to provide intensive treatment for autistic children under the age of 18 and was frauded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s of interest that when the program began, 41 children were treated in the program and two years later a whopping 328 were in the program, increasing Medicaid funding to the EIDBI providers 3000%. The FBI raided two of the EIDBI providers and found “substantial evidence that many of these companies have been submitting fraudulent claims for EIDBI services that were not actually provided or were not covered by the EIDBI program.” So, after lengthy searches, it appears that state statute of the EIDBI program places the Commissioner of the Department of Health Services in Minnesota in charge of oversight of the EIDBI program. But everyone knows that Commissioners never do the actual work. State employees are hired to carry out the actual oversight. Unfortunately, there are no names or offices that are made public that reveal who the Commissioner put in place as boots on the ground to ensure the EIDBI program ran correctly. A completely useless EIDBI Advisory Group was set up to provide community/professional input on the EIDBI program, but after careful review, AbleChild would suggest there are major conflicts of interest within the Advisory Group that may have led to some of the EIDBI fraud. AbleChild will follow up with an in-depth look at those conflicts of interest in the Advisory Group in a future article. It is of interest, however, that of the 21 Advisory Group meetings held between 2017 and 2021 (no other meetings are listed in the archives after 2021) not one mention is made about any fraud within the EIDBI program. Zero. In fact, within a year of the program beginning, the Advisory Group recommended expansion of the EIDBI program with increased numbers of “providers.” Many would argue that this expansion of the number of “providers” by the Commissioner of the Department of Health Services ultimately greatly increased the fraudulent Medicaid billing. It also should be noted that AbleChild was unable to find any mention by the Advisory Group of any oversight of the EIDBI program. The mentality among the Advisory Group appears to be focused on expanding services yet providing no guidance about who would provide oversight or even how oversight would happen among the EDIBI providers. But the oversight issue should have been picked up by state employees who handle the payment of these providers. Afterall, would the extreme jump in the numbers of autistic children not catch someone’s attention at the state payment level? Was there not one state employee who questioned the increase of payments from $32 million in 2020 to $81million in 2021 and again rising to $133 million in 2022? The Commissioner must answer for the obvious lack of oversight because had there been any oversight, AbleChild doubts the fraud would have occurred in the EIDBI program. These aren’t tough questions. Did the Commissioner of the Department of Health Services set up oversight of the EIDBI program and where can the oversight guidance be found? Did the Commissioner ever have state employees validate EIDBI providers in person? Were there boots on the ground (even periodically) validating that the providers existed and were providing the services billed to the state? If not, why? Why would there have been no oversight into the EIDBI program required by the legislature or the Commissioner of the Department of Health Services? The bottom line here is that real people run these Medicaid programs. The billing and payments are handled by flesh and blood people. How could the fraud have continued for years and hundreds of millions of dollars without state employees knowing about it? While there now are a gazillion state and federal audits being conducted into the Minnesota Medicaid system, someone needs to ask the state employees what they saw. Was it a case of intimidation from the higher ups that caused the years-long fraud? If so, documented proof of the intimidation within the state agency needs to be made public. If not, then serious questions need to be asked about why there was no oversight of a billion dollars paid to seriously questionable Medicaid program providers. Questions need to be asked of the legislature and of the numerous Commissioners who oversaw the EIDBI program. It seems completely unrealistic that legislators would enact programs without providing guidance on the oversight of the program. Humans are responsible. Whether by accident or intent, this fraud was carried out because humans allowed it to happen. The fraud did not happen in a vacuum. Blaming fraud on the guy at the top is too easy. There are lots of state employees between the provider and the Governor. It’s time to ask what did they know about this colossal fraud and let the chips fall where they may. Be the Voice for the Voiceless AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety. What you can do.  Sign the Petition calling for federal hearings! Donate! Every dollar you give is a powerful statement, a resounding declaration that the struggles of these families will no longer be ignored. Your generosity today will echo through generations, ensuring that the rights and well-being of children are fiercely guarded. Don’t let another family navigate this journey alone. Donate now and join us in creating a world where every child’s mind is nurtured, respected, and given the opportunity to thrive.  As a 501(c)3 organization, your donation to AbleChild is not only an investment in the well-being of vulnerable children but also a tax-deductible contribution to a cause that transcends individual lives.  

Tyler Robinson’s alleged assassination of Charlie Kirk has already put his family’s ideology and environment under a spotlight, but the professional role of his mother, Amber Robinson, inside Utah’s Medicaid waiver system has escaped the level of scrutiny it deserves. As a state‑funded support coordinator embedded in Governor Spencer Cox’s disability‑services apparatus, Robinson wielded gatekeeping power over life‑shaping services for vulnerable Utahns, paid with public dollars, in a system that is structurally opaque and highly vulnerable to fraud and abuse. The fact that even in a case this high‑profile the public cannot see how many people were served, where they were referred , or how often Robinson actually met with patients is not just a personal mystery—it is an indictment of the Cox administration’s Medicaid oversight. Public records and news reports identify Amber Robinson as a licensed social worker and support coordinator working for Intermountain Support Coordination Services, a private agency under contract with Utah’s Division of Services for People with Disabilities (DSPD). Robinson was paid, indirectly, through Medicaid waiver funds to “coordinate” services for disabled clients—helping to obtain access to housing, day programs, therapies, and medical care—yet neither DSPD nor Intermountain has disclosed Robinson’s caseload size, or referral patterns. In a rational system, the state could show, even in unidentified form: how many clients were managed, how often time was spent with each client, and which providers and programs Robinson favored and preferred for referral. Instead, that trail is effectively invisible to the public. Zoom further out into the behavioral health system Robinson worked in and the stakes become clearer. DSPD service‑category reports show Utah spending upwards of twelve million dollars per year—on “Support Coordination – External” alone, using a standard Medicaid per‑member‑per‑month rate of about two hundred dollars. More than seven thousand people— on DSPD waivers—must be tied to a coordinator to get services. Dozens of private agencies, including Intermountain Support Coordination Services, share that work, each receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Yet Utah does not publish even basic vendor‑level caseload counts or referral breakdowns, and these large payments appear only as lump sums in budget tables. The payment structure itself is tailor‑made for abuse. External coordinators bill Medicaid at a flat monthly rate per authorized client, regardless of whether they provide one token phone call or sustained, in‑person, person‑centered planning. Federal guidance on home‑ and community‑based services warns that this kind of case‑management and coordination is a high‑risk area for ghost clients, billing for services not rendered, and conflicts of interest, especially when documentation and monitoring are weak. Utah’s own Office of Inspector General has already found that waiver documentation in this space is often missing or insufficient to support payment, and that inaccurate claims are common enough to require labor‑intensive, record‑by‑record audits just to understand what was billed. None of this is required under privacy laws. HIPAA and HHS guidance explicitly allow de‑identified and limited‑data‑set reporting: states can publish aggregate and provider‑level data as long as direct identifiers—names, exact dates of birth, addresses—are removed or coded. That means Utah could legally release, for each support‑coordination vendor, de‑identified tables showing the number of clients, visit frequencies, referral patterns (by service category, not by name), and total Medicaid payments. Utah could also publish coordinator‑level metrics in coded form. That kind of transparency would not expose any individual’s identity, but it would make it far harder to hide ghost clients, phony contacts, or systematic steering into particular systems such as Intermountain owned hospitals, behavioral‑health units, or gender‑related clinics. Under Governor Cox, however, Utah’s Medicaid support‑coordination program remains a black box. Budgets and annual reports roll support‑coordination costs into broad “service administration” categories and vendor‑payment lines, with no public drill‑down on which agencies are growing fastest, which coordinators carry unsustainable caseloads, or which providers receive a disproportionate share of referrals. This lack of granular reporting persists even after the state’s own oversight bodies have documented major weaknesses in waiver documentation, billing accuracy, and record retention. At best, that is negligence; at worst, it is a fertile environment for systemic fraud and quiet ideological capture of vulnerable clients. In that context, treating Amber Robinson as just “the alleged assassin’s mom” misses the real story. She is a case study in how much power a single support coordinator can hold—and how little the public is allowed to know about what that power is used for. How many disabled Utahns did Robinson serve, how often were clients met with and were Robinson’s referrals concentrated within Intermountain network, including politically sensitive services? Did Robinson’s publicly funded work align with state rules on person‑centered planning, conflict of interest, and civil‑rights protections? Those are empirical questions that should be answerable from raw Medicaid and DSPD records, and yet they are not being answered in any public forum. Why didn't Governor Cox reveal that Tyler Robinson's mother worked for a behavioral health vendor in his administration? Federal standards on Medicaid program integrity emphasize data analytics, targeted audits, and provider‑level reporting as core tools to detect overbilling and conflicts of interest. Given Utah’s high waiver spending, the documented history of poor documentation, and the political and social stakes of the Charlie Kirk case, it is entirely reasonable to argue that the FBI, federal health‑care fraud units, and Utah’s own Office of Inspector General should be examining Amber Robinson’s full billing trail, Intermountain support‑coordination payments, and the Cox administration’s internal communications about this program. The question is not whether such an investigation would be justified—it is why, in a system this structurally vulnerable, the roles of Governor Cox’s Medicaid machine and Tyler Robinson’s state‑funded mother are not already front and center in the conversation? Be the Voice for the Voiceless AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety. What you can do.  Sign the Petition calling for federal hearings! Donate! Every dollar you give is a powerful statement, a resounding declaration that the struggles of these families will no longer be ignored. Your generosity today will echo through generations, ensuring that the rights and well-being of children are fiercely guarded. Don’t let another family navigate this journey alone. Donate now and join us in creating a world where every child’s mind is nurtured, respected, and given the opportunity to thrive.  As a 501(c)3 organization, your donation to AbleChild is not only an investment in the well-being of vulnerable children but also a tax-deductible contribution to a cause that transcends individual lives.

REPRINTED ARTICLE FROM A YEAR AGO! January 13, 2025 Given the recent attention to the State of Minnesota’s Medicaid fraud by members of the Somalian community, one has to wonder why the FBI has not seized the provider data. Where is Kash Patel and Dan Bongino? This is federal money. The FBI needs to raid the Minnesota government offices today. Medicaid fraud is apparently rampant in Minnesota’s Somali-speaking communities and, according to federal warrants, hundreds of millions of taxpayer funds may have been paid for services never provided. How, one might ask, is a financial fraud of this magnitude possible without state officials being aware? It’s simple. Zero oversight. In a nutshell, the Minnesota legislature created the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) treatment program in 2017. The purpose of EIDBI was to provide intensive treatment to children under the age of 18 on the autism spectrum. Since the creation of EIDBI there has been a remarkable boom in autistic cases in Minnesota, especially among Somali children. According to one report the providers of this “intensive” autism treatment have increased 700% in just the past five years from 41 in 2018 to 328 in 2023. Along with that increase is the amount of Medicaid funds paid out. During the same timeframe there was a 3000% increase in Medicaid funds paid to these autism providers rising from $6 million to nearly $200 million. Earlier this year the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided two autism care providers as part of its investigation into Medicaid fraud in Minnesota. Smart Therapy Center in Minneapolis and Star Autism Center in St. Cloud which cater to the Somali community received nearly $10 million dollars in Medicaid payments. According to the FBI search warrants of Smart Therapy and Star Autism Center, “the investigation has found substantial evidence that many of these companies have been submitting fraudulent claims for EIDBI services that were not actually provided or that were not covered by the EIDBI program.” The State Medicaid payments for autism treatment grew at an astounding rate from $32 million in 2020 to $81 million in 2021 going as high as $133 million in 2022 and more than $200 million in 2023. And it is of interest that these same treatment centers also are connected to another fraud regarding the Feeding Our Future case in Minnesota where claims were made by providers for more meals than were served or never served any to the tune of $250 million. Smart Therapy Center reportedly participated in the Feeding Our Future program to the tune of $465,000 that apparently was “grossly inflated” meals claims. The reported Medicaid fraud being investigated by the FBI began when a supervisor of Smart Therapy Center reported the fraud advising FBI agents that the employees were “18- or 19-year-old relatives of the owners who had no formal education beyond high school and no training or certification related to the treatment of autism.” According to the supervisor, the Smart Therapy Center’s owners hired these unqualified employees because “they were relatives of the owners, cheap labor and were unlikely to question what was going on at the company.” Even more interesting beyond employees being unqualified to be intensive treatment care givers, an employee reported that many of the clients “did not appear to be autistic” and further explained that the owners recruited new clients by “talking to parents they knew and even knocking on doors in the community and trying to talk parents into getting their children into autism treatment.”  And, quite believable, the employee also admitted that they believed the owners “paid parents of clients to bring their children to Smart Therapy.” What is really galling is that the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) created an advisory group made up of experts, parents, primary caregivers and people with autism spectrum disorder and related conditions to oversee the EIDBI program. This advisory group is tasked with “sharing information, answering questions, tackling issues, as well as provide feedback about the EIDBI benefit.” The advisory group holds meetings available to the public that “take into consideration diverse perspectives and needs.” In other words, lots of touchy-feely discussion about how to make the EIDBI service available yet nothing about accounting for the funds paid for those services. Minnesota isn’t the only state to experience fraud within its Medicaid services. This case just happens to be exceptionally outrageous for the amounts apparently illegally gotten. The problem, of course, is that without oversight it doesn’t take long before real financial fraud occurs. Imagine in just five short years, the American taxpayers were ripped off of hundreds-of-millions of dollars because no one in state government thought oversight of Medicaid funds was necessary. Had it not been for the employee whistleblower, the taxpayers would be no wiser. How did the “providers” get away with the fraud? Simple. There was no oversight. The behavioral health community writes the legislation that creates a program like EIDBI and screams that more money and mental health access is necessary. Worse, when the statutes are written, there is no real oversight, and no licensure is required to be a legitimate medical/behavioral caregiver. Three names come to mind when placing blame. First Jodi Harpstead the Commissioner Department of Human Services in Minnesota, Willie Jett, Commissioner of Education and  Director of Medicaid & MinnesotaCare. Each of these people should have been aware that something strange was happening in the EIDBI program. If Minnesota is like other states, Harpstead would have had to request additional funding from the budget committee each of the years there were increases in the program. Medicaid funding normally is fifty percent State budget funds and fifty percent federal matching funds. Usually, lawmakers want to know why the increase is needed in a specific program as the legislature will have to increase the budget…requiring more taxpayer funds. Further, what exactly were the questions (and answers) posed by the state budget committee when faced with such an enormous budget increase? And, finally, where were the federal Medicaid representatives? Usually, the feds require monthly extensive reporting and oversight of Medicaid funds. How did Minnesota federal representatives miss such a massive funding increase without serious questions and data to support those hundreds of millions of increased Medicaid dollars? Is the FBI curious about what part the federal Medicaid representatives played in the fraud? The fact that so many different state and federal departments missed this massive fraud leaves one to wonder if the fraud goes much deeper. The FBI and state inspector generals need to find out how deep the fraud is. And, more importantly, someone in the Minnesota government must examine all the behavioral health programs and providers. That no proof of treatment qualifications was required for the EIDBI program says everything about the subjectivity of behavioral/mental health and how easily the taxpayers can be frauded. Be the Voice for the Voiceless AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety. What you can do.  Sign the Petition calling for federal hearings! Donate! Every dollar you give is a powerful statement, a resounding declaration that the struggles of these families will no longer be ignored. Your generosity today will echo through generations, ensuring that the rights and well-being of children are fiercely guarded. Don’t let another family navigate this journey alone. Donate now and join us in creating a world where every child’s mind is nurtured, respected, and given the opportunity to thrive.  As a 501(c)3 organization, your donation to AbleChild is not only an investment in the well-being of vulnerable children but also a tax-deductible contribution to a cause that transcends individual lives.

The Federal Government is the largest funder of mental health services and psychiatric drugs, yet these same federal agencies that provide mental health services do not provide any information for safely getting off the drugs. AbleChild believes that as the largest supplier of psychiatric drugs, the federal government should also provide an “Exit plan” for deprescribing psychiatric drugs.  Medicaid and Medicare Part D treat psychiatric drugs as “must-cover” commodities: federal rules require drug plans to cover all or nearly all antidepressants and antipsychotics as protected classes, ensuring easy access and steady revenue for manufacturers. With Medicaid alone, antipsychotics generated more than 73 million prescription claims and  more than 6 billion dollars in one year, accounting for roughly 9% of all Medicaid drug spending and 10% of prescriptions.  This federal psychiatric drug infrastructure is one-way: it is built to initiate and maintain long-term drug exposure. There is no parallel requirement that any prescriber, clinic, or health plan design a personalized Exit plan before starting any psychiatric medications, and no federal benefit category that funds slow, labor-intensive taper support the way it funds prescription refills. Regulators acknowledge serious risks associated with too many of the psychiatric drugs. For example, the Food and Drug Administration’s, (FDA) black-box warnings on antidepressants note increased suicidality risk in children, teens, and young adults, and require close monitoring when treatment is started or doses are changed. Large reviews of antidepressant withdrawal find that discontinuation symptoms are common—An alarming body of meta-analyses and large-scale surveys consistently demonstrates that between one-third and nearly one-half of patients prescribed psychiatric drugs experience withdrawal effects, with a significant portion enduring severe and drawn-out symptoms. For many, these reactions are far more than discomfort—they include incapacitating dizziness, unrelenting nausea, jarring electric-shock sensations, agitation, and relentless insomnia, often rivaling or overwhelming the original condition that led to treatment. Beyond these physical and psychological torments, the risks escalate further. Withdrawal can trigger waves of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, with evidence linking severe discontinuation—particularly of antidepressants and opioids—to suicide attempts and completed suicides. Research documents the strong association between withdrawal and heightened aggression or violence, whether due to direct drug effects, physical desperation, or drug-seeking behavior fueled by protracted suffering. These dangers are not rare complications—they are consequences faced by a non-trivial share of those attempting to discontinue psychiatric drugs, and their impact on patient safety, public health, and the justice system is profound and underacknowledged. Yet despite clear evidence that stopping psychiatric drugs can be medically complex and dangerous, U.S. law does not guarantee access to slow tapers, compounding, or close follow-up, when patients want to come off the drugs. A few specialty guidelines now outline careful benzodiazepine tapers and warn against abrupt cessation, but they are advisory documents, not enforceable rights. In practice, patients are routinely placed on medications with known withdrawal syndromes, while being left to navigate the exit alone or with minimal support when they try to stop. Because coverage rules privilege pills, they tilt the entire system toward chronic drug dependence instead of time-limited, skill-building care. Analyses of Medicaid spending show billions flowing to antipsychotics and other psychotropics, while non-pharmacological interventions—peer support, psychotherapy, exercise programs, housing support—remain underfunded and harder to access, especially for low-income patients. For many people, the easiest treatment to start (a prescription) becomes the hardest to leave, not because of personal weakness, but because the addictive nature of the drugs, policy and payment are designed that way. Labeling and drugging carry deep civil-liberty consequences. Once someone is coded with a psychiatric diagnosis and placed on powerful drugs, that record can influence everything from custody disputes to employment opportunities, firearm rights, and how police and courts interpret their credibility and autonomy. The FDA’s own warnings concede that some psychiatric drugs can increase agitation, impulsivity, or suicidality in subgroups, yet these same drugs are pushed as a default requirement to be considered “in treatment.” In effect, a patient who accepts a psychiatric label and a prescription in today’s system risks trading long-term bodily sovereignty and legal standing for short-term empty promises of symptom relief. The state and insurers guarantee an on-ramp—coverage, formularies, aggressive screening—but refuse to build a safe, resourced off-ramp. Until there is a legal right to an Exit plan and public funding for non-drug options, “choice” in psychiatric treatment in the United States remains heavily one-sided, favoring lifelong medication over informed consent.  Here is AbleChild's 10 point recommended federal psychiatric drug "exit plan."

ABLECHILD RECOMMENDED FEDERAL PSYCHIATRIC DRUG “EXIT PLAN”

• Physicians must conduct all biological tests first to rule out any possible medical condition. 
• Physicians must advise patients that the mental health diagnosis is not based in science and there is no abnormality in the brain that is the diagnosed psychiatric disorder.
• Physician must advise patient of alternative treatment other than drugs, ie. exercise, diet, and talk therapy. 
• Physicians must advise patients that the pharmaceutical companies do not know how the recommended psychiatric drug works in the brain for the disorder.
• At first prescription written, physician must provide an anticipated “treatment” timeline. Start date and expected end date for each drug.
• With each prescription, physicians must provide written expectations with specific timeframes.
• Provide patient with written information about when prescription drug is anticipated to work and what specific possible life-threatening adverse events to be aware of for each prescribed drug.
• At first prescription, physicians should provide patients with return in-person appointment to review behavioral status and discussions about continuation or discontinuation of specific drugs.
• Physicians must provide detailed written information about withdrawing from each psychiatric drug and should be overseen by physicians on weekly basis.
• Three-, Six- and Nine-month physician follow-up recommend after withdrawal from all psychiatric drugs.

  Be the Voice for the Voiceless AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety. What you can do.  Sign the Petition calling for federal hearings! Donate! Every dollar you give is a powerful statement, a resounding declaration that the struggles of these families will no longer be ignored. Your generosity today will echo through generations, ensuring that the rights and well-being of children are fiercely guarded. Don’t let another family navigate this journey alone. Donate now and join us in creating a world where every child’s mind is nurtured, respected, and given the opportunity to thrive.  As a 501(c)3 organization, your donation to AbleChild is not only an investment in the well-being of vulnerable children but also a tax-deductible contribution to a cause that transcends individual lives.