Dementia

From Healio: Researchers recently found that veterans diagnosed with PTSD and prescribed antidepressants or atypical antipsychotics are at a higher risk for dementia than veterans...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins, The Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School, Duke and others found in a study of 230 Alzheimer's patients tracked over four...

27 (24%) of 112 geriatric patients admitted consecutively to an inpatient psychiatric unit had delirium from underlying medical conditions that was misdiagnosed as a psychiatric...

From Psychology Today: Although auditory hallucinations are commonly thought of as a sign of mental illness, research shows that hearing voices is common among the general population...

From NBC: According to human rights investigators, anti-psychotic drugs are often administered to nursing home residents to address behavioral issues. Our nation's lack of funding...

When we eliminated his last psychotropic prescription, it was as if my father came back from the dead. All of the monster-like qualities that we thought were severe symptoms of his dementia have practically disappeared. We’ve found ourselves questioning whether he has dementia at all.

From The Telegraph: A major new study has found a strong association between long-term exposure to antidepressants and risk of dementia. "Researchers warned there may be...

Greater cumulative doses of drugs that are anticholinergic or block the neurotransmitter acetylcholine are associated with significant increases in dementia and Alzheimer's.

From The New York Times: The potentially harmful impact of loneliness and isolation on our health and well-being have been well documented over the past...

A new documentary coming to theatres around the US over the next few months explores Dan Cohen's Music and Memory program and its emotional...

From Next Avenue: The drug Nuedexta has only been approved for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, the maker of...

From Psychiatric Times: A recent study suggests that Kundalini yoga may be at least as effective as memory training in improving cognitive resilience in older adults with...

The Office of the Inspector General finds that 99.5% of nursing facilities in the United States are non-compliant regarding federal regulations concerning antipsychotic use....

From Aeon: A recent study at UCLA found that lifestyle changes including diet modifications, exercise, stress management, and increased sleep can significantly improve the memory and...

This week, JAMA Internal Medicine published online an interesting paper, “Cumulative Use of Strong Anticholinergics and Incident Dementia: A Prospective Cohort Study.” They found that exposure to anticholinergic drugs significantly increased the risk of developing dementia. This study has important implications for those who prescribe and take psychiatric drugs.

A new study in JAMA Neurology finds that the use of antipsychotic drugs more than doubled the risk of death in patients with Parkinson’s...

From The Washington Post: Despite major lawsuits and detailed reports pertaining to severe health risks associated with the antipsychotic Seroquel, the drug remains one of...

Sharon Begley for the STAT examines new research which raises “doubts about conventional approaches to diagnosing and finding treatments for Alzheimer’s.” Article →

University of Groningen researchers analyzed only small, short-term clinical trials of generally poor quality to determine that antipsychotics are not linked to increased risk of death in elderly people with dementia.

Researchers at the University of Milan and King's College, London thoroughly reviewed the literature available on Medline and Cochrane regarding the use of benzodiazepines...

A new study has found that the three most commonly-used dementia screening measures often misdiagnose patients.

Researchers found that veterans with both conditions had higher odds of being prescribed second-generation antipsychotics than those presenting with just PTSD.

Article Abstract: Although research supports the stigma and labeling perspective, empirical evidence also indicates that a social safety net remains intact for those with mental...

-Some nursing homes are changing their approaches since the US federal government began more closely regulating the use of antipsychotic medications in elderly patients with dementia.

The International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry published an article titled Safety and utility of acute electroconvulsive therapy for agitation and aggression in dementia,  which concludes "Electroconvulsive therapy may be a safe treatment option to reduce symptoms of agitation and aggression in patients with dementia whose behaviors are refractory to medication management." But the participants were not a random selection of people taking the drugs in question. Rather, they were individuals selected because of aggressive behavior, most of whom had been taking some or all of these drugs on admission. So it is a distinct possibility that the aggression was a drug effect for many, or even most, of the study participants.