FDA, Antipsychotic Drug Warning!!!

Thanks for the link Rozie. The article covered the dangers to the elderly, not the general population. Many of us have elderly parents and appreciate the information you provided.

Many doctor's arent't familiar with the medicines they prescribe. They only know what the drug reps tell them. Your pharmacist is the best go-to person for questions on your medicine. Read the info sheet stapled to your receipt. Make sure you understand it. Ask questions.

A person can also research on sites like www.webmd.com _among others.

A general warning, make sure you know what your medicine is for and how it works. Try not to pay attention to the 'rare side effects'. Once you read them, they stay in your mind and you might over-worry.

My mother use to do private duty nursing in the home. One of her clients was an elderly lady that was a widow and lived by herself. Her family wanted someone to monitor their mother as it seemed that she would wander off at times. She had been diagnosed with dementia. When my mother started going to the house and at times spent the night she noticed that there was one drug in particular that her patient was taking and had been taking for years. It was Quaalude or ludes as the street name was. My mother found shopping bags filled with empty pill bottles of that drug and they went back for about 8 years. Her Dr. was an elderly man that should have retired years before that. My mother calle dit to the attention to her family and very strongly suggested that she be taken off that drug and that they find a new Dr. No wonder the women was going off wondering in the middle of the night.

DCMerkle

Hi, Rozie! I am Pharmacy student and I just completed a project studying the use of antipsychotic medications for behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) in an aged care homea couple of weeks ago. From the project, I discovered that antipsychotics could be useful for BPSD at times, but most of the time the effect wears off and you can see symptoms such as agitation and agression in these patients start to build up again. From the material I read about this antipsychotic use issue, I noted that guidelines recommend that antipsychotics are normally not used first line in the management of BPSD; the first step is always trying to identify causes of the underlying behaviour of dementia patients eg. infection, pain, constipation, vision or hearing problems, and the second step is to try try non-drug measures such as music, group activity, exercise or pet therapy to calm the dementia patient down. I have also seen a few patients suffering from side effects such as Parkinsonism and involuntary movements (or tardive dyskinesia in scientific language). I guess it's all a risk-benefit balance when using an antipsychotic.

By the way, thanks for bringing up this issue and for recommending the link to the news article. I guess it's good to bring up health issues up sometimes to create awareness.