Older Patients Being Prescribed Risky Anticholinergic Drugs

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From MinnPost: A new University of Minnesota study has found that anticholinergic drugs, including antidepressants, continue to be prescribed to millions of older Americans despite...

Lifestyle Changes, Not a Magic Pill, Can Reverse Alzheimer’s

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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...

Stigma

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In this episode of BBC's Thinking Allowed, Laurie Taylor invites three researchers to speak about the origins and meaning of the term "stigma," as well as...

Sunday FM: Music Therapy Comes to Life in Documentary

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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...

Common Alzheimer’s Drug Linked to Potentially Life-threatening Conditions

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A popular Alzheimer's and dementia drug has been linked to two potentially fatal conditions.

Care Homes Over-Prescribing Drugs for Residents with Dementia

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From The Guardian: According to a new Human Rights Watch report, U.S. nursing homes are inappropriately prescribing antipsychotics to an estimated 179,000 residents with dementia each...

Lack of Face-to-Face Contact Doubles Depression Risk for Older Adults

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New research suggests that more frequent in-person contact lessens the risk of depression in older adults. The study, published in this month’s issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, found that in Americans over fifty the more face-to-face contact they had with children, family and friends, the less likely they were to develop depressive symptoms.

Deadly Drugs Misused in U.S. Nursing Facilities

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From AARP: The family of Bobby Glenn Tweed recently settled a lawsuit with a nursing home over his wrongful death. Tweed was prescribed psychotropic drugs without...

Discontinuing Psychotropics Reduces Falls in Elderly

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Australian researchers look at the literature on the effect of psychotropics on falls in the elderly; largest effect of any randomized trial was achieved...

Assessing the Cost of Psychiatric Drugs to the Elderly and Disabled Citizens of the...

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ProPublica is well known for creating interesting data bases that allow anyone hooked up to a computer to see by name whether a physician is accepting Big Pharma payments — from dinners to speaking engagements to consulting services. What may be lesser known is that occasionally ProPublica will publish other data that when carefully mined can reveal even more about the use of psychiatric drugs especially when there is a public funding source available.

Risk of Death in the Elderly Trebled With Antipsychotics

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In a nine-year study of all 2,224 residents of Leppävirta, Finland who were 65 years old or older, researchers found that the 332 residents...

Drug May Lead to Early Death for People With Alzheimer’s

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From The Washington Post: A recent study found that benzodiazepines are associated with a greater chance of early death for those with Alzheimer's. "Researchers analyzed data on...

Dementia Patients at Risk of Injury or Death Due to Antipsychotics

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From The Independent: Thousands of people with Lewy Body Dementia are being prescribed antipsychotic drugs, increasing their risk of death fourfold. "These medicines, prescribed to around...

For-Profit Medicine Incentivizes Overmedicating Our Elderly

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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...

Psychotropics Accelerate Cognitive and Functional Decline

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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...

Elderly With Dementia can be Withdrawn From Antipsychotics

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The Cochrane Library reports that "many older people with Alzheimer's dementia and NPS (neuropsychiatric symptoms) can be withdrawn from chronic antipsychotic medication without detrimental effects...

Activity-Based Therapies Reduce Antipsychotic Use

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Researchers from the University of North Carolina found that activity-based therapy and care reduced the use of antipsychotics in a study of 107 people...

Benzodiazepine Use of 50% of Elderly Patients is Not Monitored

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The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publication Psychiatric News has released an article about the recent British Medical Journal study finding strong links between long-term...

Antipsychotics for Dementia: Not Justified and Risky

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In a study of antipsychotics used to treat 75,445 patients in nursing homes in the United States, researchers from Harvard Medical School, Columbia and...

Lower Education Linked to Higher Antipsychotic Use in Swedish Elderly

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Elderly people in Sweden are five times more likely to be taking antipsychotics if they have a diagnosis of dementia, according to research published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. And among those people with dementia, the lower their education the higher the likelihood they’re taking antipsychotics.

Antipsychotics Increase Risk of Heart Attack in the Elderly

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In a study of 10,969 older patients treated with antipsychotics in Quebec, Canada, researchers found a 2.19 times greater risk of heart attack in...

SSRIs Significantly Increase Falls in Dementia, Even at Low Doses

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Researchers in the Netherlands followed 248 nursing home residents with dementia for two years, finding that even 25% of the defined daily dose of...

People With Dementia Press for More Rights

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From STAT: People with dementia are coming together to fight for the right to make their own decisions, to have a voice in public policy, and to...

AARP Joins Antipsychotic Lawsuit Against CA Nursing Home

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The AARP has joined an "unprecedented class-action lawsuit" against a California nursing home accused of using antipsychotics without informed consent from residents or family...

First Aid for Emotional Trauma

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Handout by Will Hall, offered on the Icarus Project website, on what emotional trauma is and how to work to heal it. Go to "First...