OMAHA — For years, the nearby home for wayward boys — made famous in the 1938 movie “Boys Town” starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney — has cared for emotionally troubled foster kids, many who come in on several prescriptions of behavior-modifying drugs.

According to Dan Daly, the vice president of youth care for Girls and Boys Town, more than 50 percent of the kids that come through nowadays are on some type of psychotropic drug prescription.

“Kids whose life has multiple disruptions in it are more likely to have a variety of symptoms,” Daly said. “When kids have a variety of symptoms, they’re more likely to be on medication because people have sought medical or psychiatric help for them — and frequently that medical or psychiatric help leads to trying them on medications.”

In Nebraska, more than 3,000 of the state’s 7,000 wards were prescribed some type of behavior-modifying drug between July 2005 and 2006, according to state Health and Human Services. In all, more than 45,000 prescriptions cost Medicaid $5.6 million — averaging about 14 prescriptions, at a cost to the state of $1,700, per ward.

About 11 percent of kids on Medicaid but not in foster care were prescribed the drugs during the same period in Nebraska.

Now, state lawmakers are debating legislation (LB52) that would examine that difference more closely, which could eventually result in restrictions or other changes to how the drugs are administered.

“By the time kids get here (to Girls and Boys Town), over 50 percent of them are taking one or more psychotropic medications,” Daly said of the center with 19 sites around the country. “After they’re with us for a year, we’re down under 20 percent of these kids who are on medicine, meaning what they really didn’t need was the medicine. What they really needed was a good, stable environment.”

State Sen. Gwen Howard, a former social worker who introduced the Nebraska bill, said she wants to know if there are systemic factors at work.

For example, compensation for foster parents is based on a child’s needs, which are itemized in a checklist and used to determine proper payment, she said.

“All those checks are weighted,” Howard said. “If there are behavior problems, that’ll easily kick up the number of those checks and the value of those checks.”

Another factor may be that it’s easier for caretakers to take foster children to pediatricians — who are more likely to prescribe psychotropic drugs to treat mental illnesses — instead of mental health professionals, Daly said.

And a doctor’s prescription could delay, or even preclude, further treatment, said Pat Connell, president of Nebraska Association of Behavioral Health Care Organizations.

“That treatment’s being delayed because there’s these various drug cocktails being put together that are used before they’re being referred to mental health professionals,” Connell said.

“I believe that this is going to become a growing issue in this country. Can we solve a crisis by giving a pill?”