Report: Antipsychotics Killing Thousands Of Brits With Dementia

A report by a British MP, Paul Burstow, claims that the use of antipsychotics in patients with dementia is leading to 23,000 deaths a year in the UK, according to this account of the report in the Telegraph (London). This makes you wonder how the wide use of drugs like Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel is playing out in America, or what a similar report here would find. Burstow's report is here.

"Mr Burstow cited a yet-to-be published study by King's College London that gave a placebo to one group of Alzheimer's patients and anti-psychotics to another for 12 months.

"The study, funded by the Alzheimer's Research Trust, found that after 24 months, the placebo group had a 78 per cent survival rate compared with 54.5 per cent for the rest; after 42 months the survival rates were 60 per cent versus 28 per cent.

"Mr Burstow said: "There are around 244,000 people with dementia living in care homes, and the Alzheimer's Society estimates 100,000 are being given anti-psychotic drugs. Of those, I am saying that 23.5 per cent could be dying prematurely as a result of being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs - or 23,500 people a year."

"Neil Hunt, of the Alzheimer's Society, said: "The over-prescription of anti-psychotic drugs to people with dementia is a serious abuse of human rights. Anti-psychotics should be used as a last resort."

Mr Burstow's report, which will be debated in the Commons today, calls for urgent police action and a ban on routine prescribing."

That unpublished study cited above should send shivers down anyone's spine because not only are we using lots of antipsychotics on older folks in America--and the UK--but we are using tons of the same drugs on children (mostly boys) and on adults for conditions that have nothing to do with psychosis. Bipolar disorder type II, depression, anxiety and ADHD.

I don't often use terms like "scandal" and "scam," but I think the way antipsychotics are being handed out by doctors and the way they are pushed by pharma companies amounts to a scandal and a scam. I am at the point where I really don't even know what to suggest as a means of addressing this situation.

"Mr Burstow said: 'Using drugs to restrain vulnerable older people with dementia is no different to strapping them to a chair. It is an abuse of their human rights. Ministers are guilty of being complacent. There should a ban on prescribing anti-psychotic drugs in all but the most severe cases of dementia.'"

While I am not a fan of banning the use of drugs of any kind, I am beginning to think that we really, really need to go back to the good old days of mental health care (OK, they weren't that good) when there was essentially a taboo on the use of antipsychotics for anything other than treating psychosis.

BTW, if anyone thinks I am joking about how widespread the use of these drugs have become, then they should consider that antipsychotics are now the third largest class of drugs sold in the US in terms of revenue, outpacing even anti-depressants which now sit in fourth place.

Burstow is correct that there is simply far too much complacency around the use of antipsychotics. I wonder what it's going to take to shock this country and the UK out of their complacency.

Thoughts?

(Via Atypical Antipsychotics.)