April 23, 2009Psych Med Polypharmacy Incapacitates Elderly ManThere's apparently a real trend in our land toward excessive polypharmacy in our elders and this account from Peter Gott's "Family Doctor" syndicated column provides a spooky example of the trend and the overuse of psych meds to "calm" patients. The man was 79 and was diagnosed with multisystem atrophy and also has dementia. "He fell last May, breaking his arm and hitting his head. Within one day, he was unable to feed himself, walk or do anything. He was hospitalized for eight days and then spent two months in a rehabilitation facility. During his hospitalization, he became extremely agitated and was given Ativan. A few days later, it was found that he had a urinary-tract infection. He had two more UTIs while in rehab, which would cause him to become agitated. Each time, he was given Ativan. That's some nice medication adjusting going on there. Seriously, though, I keep hearing similar stories from readers and you've got to wonder what the hell is going on out there and where this overuse of psych meds got started. As for ECT for agitation with dementia, I've never heard of the practice and am disgusted by it. You've got to wonder how all this was going down and if it happened behind the family's back. The case sure sounds like elder abuse to me. As it happens, the above man was taken off all the psych meds and has reportedly improved over the last five months. Gott himself agreed with the move. On a personal note, my father, 76, recently developed bronchitis and went to one of those Redi-Care sorts of clinics they have in Arizona. The doctor who saw my dad said he was stunned that my father was on no medication of any kind (there's no reason for any). Apparently, it's quite common for senior citizens to be on a slew of drugs for all kinds of ailments, but when you read stories like the above you just shake your head. Posted by Philip Dawdy at April 23, 2009 10:15 AM
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Congrats to your father for managing to avoid medications. That's wonderful and I bet he'll live a lot longer with a higher quality of life than a lot of others who have been bamboozled into having "treatment" for this, that and the other. I'm serious. Posted by: Sara at April 23, 2009 02:16 PMPhilip, one reason I feel my mother lived until 93 in spite of smoking for several years was the fact that she was on very little medication until the last few years of her life. One thing she did that I feel prolonged her life was she made a huge list of every drug she had that she had a reaction to no matter how small it was. It scared the bleepers out of doctors and made them reluctant to give her anything. I have always wondered whether she had a grand purpose in doing this. Initially, I thought she just did this to protect herself against getting a drug she had a bad experience with. But I wonder on some level if she knew that the elderly were overmedicated and thought that doing this would protect her against that. Posted by: AA at April 23, 2009 02:33 PMPost a comment
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