A national audit of psychiatric wards in the United Kingdom has revealed that women diagnosed with personality disorders are disproportionately subjected to rapid tranquilisation.
In the study published in BJPsych Open, more than eight in ten episodes of acutely disturbed behavior involved female patients, and they were nearly twice as likely as men to receive intramuscular sedatives.
Rapid tranquillisation (RT) refers to the use of parenteral medication—such as intramuscular benzodiazepines, antihistamines, or antipsychotics—to quickly sedate patients in crisis. This reliance on pharmacological restraint carries particular risks for women. As the authors note:
“Women who self-harm often have a history of abuse and may perceive being restrained and having their clothing moved to administer parenteral medication into the buttock or thigh as provocative and re-traumatising.”
Although guidelines recommend prioritizing psychological skills and voluntary approaches for people with personality disorders, the researchers found that in practice, “these episodes are often characterised by self-harm and frequently managed with rapid tranquillisation.”
Personality disorder diagnoses, particularly borderline personality disorder, have long been marked by stigma, a problem documented in research and acknowledged by the creator of DBT, Marsha Linehan. That same stigma extends to individuals who self-harm, where it can deepen distress and compound feelings of isolation. The new study notes that when stigma and retraumatization intersect with the frequent use of rapid tranquillisation, patients are not only at risk of further psychological harm but may also face an unnecessary burden of medication side effects.
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“This suggests a treatment culture that diverges from guideline recommendations, where symptom-targeted prescribing prevails despite the risks of side effects and overmedication”
Doesn’t this prescribe mainstream psychiatric practice? What are they doing other than “symptom-targeted prescribing?” Seems like the only tool they have in their “toolbox” for the most part.
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“Study Warns of Overreliance on Rapid Tranquillisation in Women’s Psychiatric Care.”
Yes, my medical records speak to this truth. My now FBI convicted, former doctor, is only a small part of a huge societal paternalistic problem.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/oak-brook-doctor-sentenced-two-years-prison-connection-kickback-scheme-sacred-heart
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I think, given the history of psychiatric oppression, and beyond that relying on anything as open for pickling oppressive history (aka DSM); would a woman simply walk into a psychiatric facility, she’s already facing scrutiny whether she’s: “hysterical,” whether she “is unfaithful,” whether she “is not doing her household duties,” whether she…
There’s a shop in town, called “spirit dreams,” and as if I hadn’t heard this before, which I had, how psychiatrists behave, a girl who had gotten out after her friends had put her in, and lied so badly that rewards have been detracted from their work, and if they show up anywhere I would be norming, they’d have to leave; she [my friend listed as dead] tells me: “psychiatrist says if you don’t take this and this and this, you’re not getting out.” the same man comes tugged like he’s being hauled by rope (which he isn’t) out of that “shop” just listed, and tries to convince me I’m not behaving the way I should towards the female workers. Then lies further more, and again I have to go to the police…..MYSELF! It’s not even that I know too much. Or that I’m not myself and having to step in from Heaven in order to save someone’s memory until they are ready, or reincarnate, or we trade places. Thinking how to make it out of having to think about it to much (like when I ran into a deer with a wound same as another of a blood trick-ling; had it was “Johnny Depp” going out to kill a deer and dump it somewhere where it would “shock” people then go tripling of; when the deer inhaled after simply doing what is supposed to not be done, is impossible and stays there, in forever, I got out of there, didn’t realize it could have been much ado about nothing, and my friend being called “an ass” about the same logistics; only it won’t suffice on stage) I almost offered to sell him a fake Renoir they wouldn’t be able to negotiate out of such, being I know that painter myself, and have something of ours, as if he has 4 secs in order to get one or who knows what. Well: TIMES UP!
A woman can’t go into such a facility without extreme nausea already, from the sheer accumulation of distress hanging around any such “resort.” And then they act like prince charming. Probably religious wars, actually. All the virgin and child paintings sculptures and now the stories also have to be about superman, prince charming, Sir Galahad, or Lancelot and mother instead, or such, just to appease the psyches and Hollywood.
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