Looking back, Pam Herrera wishes she had asked more questions and been more forceful with her son’s therapists.
The list of medications her son took ages 4-16 is staggering: multiple antipsychotics, antidepressants and stimulants, sometimes five at a time, each at the maximum dose allowed. He was so medicated, Herrera said, “we disintegrated his ability to learn.”
The Herreras, foster parents to more than 100 children over the past 18 years, first met Anthony when he was 15 months old. He was so neglected and malnourished that he could not sit up or eat solid food.
They adopted him in 1998, when he was 3, and for the next several years struggled to control behavior so violent and out of control that it took over their lives.