Billie-Jane Orchard

The following article is a true story, from a 2009 news journal about problems that didn’t have to take place but is a flagship problem. This is a good article to circulate. Please respond to let me know your thoughts on this after reading it. 20 year old Billie-Jane Orchard was from Jackson, Mississippi. She is the daughter of a graphic computer artist and a certified public accountant. Billy-Jane was born a very normal and healthy baby and the first two years of her life were simple and happy with the potential of any other well-adjusted child. But that was all about to change. Her parents had separated when she was 2. Both of them agreed that Billie-Jane was not the result of an accidental pregnancy, nor the cause of their failed marriage. They agreed on joint custody to speed up the divorce, thinking that they both loved her but couldn’t live with each other. For two years after, she kept going back and forth between her mom and her dad, spending three days a week with her mom, three days a week with her dad, and the extra day with a neighbor. When Billie-Jane was six, her parents had decided that they couldn’t have her anymore, despite the fact that she was a well-adjusted, healthy, loving child. But instead of putting her up for adoption or leaving with relatives who wanted her, they took her to a child psychiatrist who diagnosed her with organic personality syndrome and early-term estrogen deficiency. The psychiatrist put her on medication and determined that as a result of his diagnosis, she was not ready to attend school. The diagnosis made her eligible for Supplementary Security Income (SSI), which included receiving Medicaid. Billie-Jane’s living situation continued as before, except that she was then also on 4 medications as prescribed by the physiatrist. As time went on, the medication was raised every time she was taken for her monthly sessions with the psychiatrist. Collectively, she had been undergoing potentially dangerous side-effects of the medications the psychiatrist had put her on including insomnia, drowsiness, vomiting, excessive weight gain, and loss of appetite. The psychiatrist had convinced both of Billie-Jane’s parents that the solution to the side-effects would be to put her on other additional medication to curb them, and supposedly that the original 4 medications would be more effective. But after three months, the side-effects subsided very little. By this time, Billie-Jane was on eleven different medications. When Billie-Jane was seven, the psychiatrist decided that she would need more intense care and ordered for her to be institutionalized until she would show “Improvement”. Of course Medicaid would pay for her to be there, so Billie-Jane was put in a special home for Developmentally Disabled Children in Texas. She would reside there until 18 years of age, at which time she as transferred to a private psychiatric hospital in California. Six months after, she was transferred to another one in Chicago, IL where she remains to this day. She has no education and knows very little language. This is especially difficult, since mainstream physicians have done all sorts of tests and have found that Billie-Jane has completely normal brain chemistry. As a result of the contracts Billie-Jane's parents had initially signed to authorize her psychiatric treatments, the government is currently her legal guardian. They considered her ineligible for tutoring and hold her to her program. Her mom now lives and works in Atlanta, GA while her dad now lives and works in San Diego, CA. Both parents visit her once a year, but never together. The parents both are remorseful about the decisions they made for Billie-Jane. Just the same, there are hundreds of cases just like Billie-Jane nationwide. The mental illness industry is the highest medical field in America. This is a true story. It was in a journal as part of an article about psychiatry and its toll on medicine and our society, that many people are not taking recognition of.