The woman, who was in her 90s, had lived for several years at the Ecumen Sunrise nursing home in Two Harbors, Minn., where the staff had grown accustomed to her grimaces and wordless cries. She took a potent cocktail of three psychotropic drugs: Ativan for anxiety and the antipsychotic Risperdal to calm her, plus an antidepressant. In all the time she’d lived at Sunrise, she hadn’t spoken. It wasn’t clear whether she could recognize her children when they came to visit.The Two Harbors home happened to be where Ecumen, which operates 16 nonprofit Minnesota nursing homes, was preparing an experiment to see if behavioral rather than pharmacological approaches could help wean residents off antipsychotic medications. They called it the Awakenings program.
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Clearing the Fog in Nursing Homes
I pray this is true. It's refreshing to see someone acknowledge the damage of psychotropic drugging and attempting to do something about it.
ReplyDeleteOf course the behavior method works, it's just that nursing homes are too lazy and understaffed to try it, so they use chemical restraints instead.
ReplyDeletewell what a surprise! we could have told them the answer if anyone cared to ask i watched our loved one die a horrid death from pscyhotropic drugging this was planned to get rid of the problem the day before puclic assistance kicked in plan drugging is used for many purposes less work for the staff hastens death when the money runs out to open up a bed for the self pay resident until their money runs out
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