That particular father is dealing with a kid who has kicked holes in every wall in the house, ripped two doors off their hinges, and ripped a bathroom sink out of the wall. The kid clearly does have some serious mental problems, and should probably be institutionalized. A generation or two ago, the sort of "parenting skills" used to deal with a child like this involved beatings and being tied up or locked up. While an argument can be made that in SOME cases, those approaches are warranted, the fact is that eny parent who tries to employ them now will end up losing custody of the kids (who will be put in foster care and given the prescribed cocktail of medications) and quite possibly end up doing prison time. That state of affairs is not the doing of the parents who are faced with how to deal these extremely troubled children.
While I don't enough context (or training) to make an assessment which you are probably more able to, I was simply puzzled by the father's response who seemed to think that the kid's meds should eliminate the need for timeouts. I'm sure you'll agree that kids who might have more mild presentations of mental difficulties, strong parenting is still required. I was not implying that timeout is not an acceptable form of discipline.