Posted by med_empowered on December 7, 2005, at 2:52:31
In reply to Re: Older Antipsychotic Drugs Called Risky » med_empowered, posted by ed_uk on December 5, 2005, at 15:21:29
here in the US, there's a pretty long history of misuse/overuse of antipsychotic drugs. It isn't limited to nursing homes; recently, it was found that in Florida, lots of the foster kids and other kids under state care were on psychotropic drugs, with many of them on multi-drug combos that could prove problematic (mother jones did an interesting article on one case of this..the kid was put on haldol, zyprexa, depakote, and ativan..she was 13.)
With the emergence of the atypicals, its more acceptable to use them "off-label"...there is some use for ADHD in the US. This is troubling since lower-class children are more likely to be diagnosed as ADHD and more likely to be given only drug (not combo) treatment. I imagine low-dose Risperdal and other atyicals would be a pretty good option for elderly dementia, especially compared to haloperidol or similar old-school drugs. The problem for me is that there's a pretty ugly history of using the neuroleptics to control and subdue people, even the non-psychotic/non-mentally ill. I'm concerned that with atypicals, we could see this happening again--only since there will be less TD and less obvious EPS, it won't raise as much conern (a chemical straight jacket is still a chemical straight jacket--even if it is a more comfortable one).
poster:med_empowered
thread:584836
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051203/msgs/586364.html