At Sokolove Law, we have seen an increasing number of nursing home abuse cases over the years. It’s a sad fact that many seniors are seriously injured as a result of abuse right in their nursing home. Sometimes this abuse is dramatic and results in broken bones and criminal prosecutions. Too often it’s more subtle and comes in the form of neglect, which results in malnutrition, dehydration, or systemic infections from skin sores that lead to more serious issues such as heart failure.
Now, recent news reports are pointing to a different kind of abuse—the use of powerful psychotropic drugs on patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
According to a recent front page story in The Boston Sunday Globe, some 2,500 nursing home residents in Massachusetts were given powerful antipsychotic drugs last year that were not intended or recommended for their medical condition.
This practice appears to be fairly widespread. The US Food and Drug Administration have twice issued nationwide alerts about the use of these drugs for elderly patients. In October, the Chicago Tribune identified 1,200 violations at Illinois nursing homes involving psychotropic medications since 2001. Those infractions affected 2,900 patients.
And the problem does not appear to be limited just to the U.S. In November, a report in the Guardian found that nearly 2,000 elderly patients are killed each year in the U.K. by unnecessary anti-psychotic medication, and as many as 144,000 people suffering from dementia in that country are being given anti-psychotic drugs unnecessarily.
Here’s the bottom line, as reported in the Globe:
“Way too many patients in nursing homes are treated with antipsychotics purely to sedate them or to control behaviors that are difficult for the staff,’’ said Robert A. Stern, an Alzheimer’s specialist and brain researcher at Boston University School of Medicine.
Simply put these drugs may be dangerous, and that may be particularly true when they are given to patients who don’t need them. The use of antipsychotic drugs on patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s is just another subtle form of nursing home abuse. If you or a loved one has been the victim of nursing home abuse of any kind, you may have legal rights. Contact us to find out more.