The Rebecca Riley case
Right now a woman named Carolyn Riley is on trial in Plymouth Superior Court for first-degree murder for allegedly giving her 4-year-old daughter, Rebecca, excessive doses of three psychiatric medications that led to her death. Rebecca’s father, Michael Riley, will go on trial later for similar charges. The defense is claiming that Rebecca died of pneumonia, not from the drugs. While this could be true, I believe that both parents, as well as the psychiatrist who prescribed the drugs, committed a terrible wrong and should be punished.
When Rebecca was just 2 years old, her mother brought her to Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and later bipolar disorder and prescribed her three psychiatric medications. Incidentally, Kifuij was also the psychiatrist of Rebecca’s two older siblings and gave them similar diagnoses and medications. The diagnosis seems to have been based entirely on the fact that Carolyn Riley said that her daughter was aggressive and had mood swings.
How could people think it is OK for a 2-year-old to be given mind-altering drugs? From all accounts, it seems like there was nothing wrong with Rebecca. A psychologist who visited the home said that she was well-adjusted and showed no signs of mental disorders or conditions. As for aggression and mood swings, what would you expect from a 2-year-old? Little kids have temper tantrums. They also tend to be aggressive, because they usually have not yet developed the capacity for empathy or respect for the rights of others. That’s just how little kids are. There’s nothing wrong with that. And even if Rebecca was more aggressive than average or had more mood swings than average, there’s nothing wrong with that, either. It is good for people to have diverse personality traits – some aggressive, some passive, some with strong emotions, others more calm. Why would you want to take everyone who differs from the average and make them be average?
Everyone who allowed Rebecca to be given these drugs but could have stopped it should be charged with child abuse. This includes her parents, as well as Dr. Kifuji, who outrageously not only was never indicted by a grand jury but is still practicing psychiatry! It’s ridiculous that parents can be charged with child endangerment for leaving their kids alone for a few minutes in a perfectly safe place, which doesn’t harm the kids at all, but cannot be charged with anything for branding kids with a lifelong label of mental illness and forcing them to take mind-altering drugs!
Another thing worth mentioning is that the Rileys were receiving about $2300 of federal disability benefits each month, much of it because of the psychiatric diagnoses of their two older children. There is clearly something wrong with this system. Why should people be given free money simply because they have been diagnosed with a mental illness? People with bipolar disorder, ADHD, and many other so-called mental illnesses may have more challenging lives than others, but they can work, so why would they need disability benefits? Of course, little kids don’t work anyways, which makes it even more puzzling that they were given disability benefits. Plus, this system creates an incentive to have your kids or yourself diagnosed with a mental illness, even if you don’t actually have one.
The only people who should see psychiatrists (and even then, only if they truly want to and come up with the idea on their own) are those who have a mental problem so severe that they cannot function. This certainly does not include little kids who were brought to a psychiatrist by their mother and have nothing wrong with them. For whatever reason, be it genuine concern, desire for disability benefits, or greed on the part of psychiatrists and drug companies, society is narrowing the range of acceptable human behavior by declaring more and more personality traits “unhealthy” and then “curing” them with brainwashing or medication. Any deviation from the average is considered a mental illness, and people are encouraged to seek therapy for every tiny problem they have. This is evil, it destroys diversity and independence, and it may have taken little Rebecca Riley’s life.