Residential care centers in Ohio have treated unruly children with multiple mind-numbing drugs whose effects when mixed are not fully known, a newspaper said Sunday.

The drugs have become a quick fix to stifle troublemakers, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

The newspaper conducted a three-month investigation that included reviews of thousands of state inspection records and interviews with child-welfare workers, doctors, families, lawyers and industry officials.

"At its worst, it's like a scene from the movie 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest' with Nurse Ratched chasing after kids with syringes of psychiatric drugs," said Gayle Channing Tenenbaum, legislative director for the Public Children Services Association of Ohio.

But the Ohio Department of Mental Health says it's a rare problem already being addressed through better training.

An advocacy group says changes in reporting regulations have allowed mental health centers to shroud evidence of abuse and overmedication.

Ohio Legal Rights Services is campaigning for stricter rules governing Ohio's 52 private residential centers to deal with out-of-control children, some of whom have mental afflictions like bipolar disorder.

In January 2004, the Ohio Department of Mental Health stopped requiring treatment centers to fill out incident reports for restraints -- both emergency medications and physical holds -- unless they involved abuse or neglect, or resulted in an attempted suicide, injury or death, said Carolyn Knight, the group's executive director. Reports of emergency drugs fell from 118 in 2003 to 10 last year.

The state licenses the centers, which treat thousands of children each year, and officials say state law prohibits using medication to restrain patients except when a child or worker is in danger.

Critics say the centers can circumvent the restrictions easily and use medication as a quick-fix solution.

"It happens underground all the time," said Steve Eidelman, executive director of the ARC of the United States, a national advocacy group for the developmentally and mentally disabled, based in Silver Spring, Maryland.

"It's all about what's easiest for the treatment providers, not what's good for the kids."

Legal Rights, an independent state agency, has reviewed 500 cases of chemical restraint in the last five years and found cases in which medication has caused hallucinations in patients and patients with a history of abuse have been physically restrained by guards.

Defenders say drugs sometimes are needed as children sent to the centers become more violent and unruly.

"They bite, hit, kick and spit," said Penny Wyman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Child Caring Agencies, which represents residential centers. "They curse, yell and throw furniture. They're angry and have a lot of issues to work out."

State officials have uncovered examples of overmedication at treatment centers throughout the state.

In one such case Dr. Patricia Goetz, the Ohio Department of Mental Health's assistant medical director, reviewed 11 cases at Belmont Pines Hospital, in Youngstown, in which 27 doses of the powerful drugs Haldol and Thorazine were given to calm, angry children.

One man said his son was so drugged up he couldn't walk or talk. Last April the state "strongly recommended" the end of emergency medications at the center, which had previously been put on probation.

Belmont Pines officials said they have stopped using emergency medications and had reduced their use by 86 percent before the state warning.