INTRODUCTION
Preying on the Elderly
In today�s high-pressure world, tradition is too often replaced by more �modern�
means of dealing with the demands of life. For example, while once heavily community-,
church- and family-based, today the task of caring for our parents and grandparents
routinely falls to organizations such as nursing homes or aged-care centers.
There we trust that professionally trained staff will take care of our elders
as we would.
Doubtless, 67-year-old Pierre Charbonneau�s wife and family felt this way when
he was rushed to a hospital suffering from a severe anxiety attack reportedly
related to Alzheimer�s disease. Displaying �acute agitation,� Pierre was prescribed
a tranquilizer. Ten days later he was transferred to a nursing home where the
drug dosage was immediately doubled, and then tripled three days after that.
Shortly after, his wife, Lucette, found him bent over in his wheelchair with
his chin touching his chest, unable to walk and capable of swallowing only a
few teaspoons of pur�ed food.
A pharmacist warned Lucette that her husband was possibly suffering irreversible
nervous system damage caused by major tranquilizers. The family called the nursing
home and requested that the drugs be stopped. It was too late. Mr. Charbonneau�s
tongue was permanently paralyzed, a doctor later explained, and he would never
regain his ability to swallow. Nine days later, Mr. Charbonneau died. The cause
of death was listed as a heart attack.
For those who contemplate how to arrange care for much-loved and aging parents
or grandparents, it is vital to know that this tragic story is not an exception
in elder care today.
When Wilda Henry took her 83-year-old mother, Cecile, to a nursing home, �she
walked in the place as good as you and I could.� Within two weeks, after being
prescribed the psychiatric drug Haldol, Cecile began babbling instead of talking,
drooling constantly, shaking violently and was unable to control her bowels.
The dose, it was later discovered, had been increased to 100 times the recommended
amount. A medical doctor determined that excessive use of Haldol had caused
these symptoms as well as permanent liver damage.
The reality of nursing home and aged-care center life today is often far from
the stylized image of communicative, interactive and interested elderly residents
living in an idyllic environment. By contrast, more often than not, the institutionalized
elderly of today appear submissive, quiet, somehow vacant, a sort of lifelessness
about them, perhaps blankly staring or deeply introspective and withdrawn. If
not by drugs, these conditions can also be brought on by the use of electroconvulsive
or shock treatment (ECT) or simply the threat of painful and demeaning restraints.
Rather than this being the failure of nursing hospital and aged care staff
generally, this is the legacy of the widespread introduction of psychiatric
treatment into the care of the elderly over the last few decades.
Consider the following facts about the �treatments� they receive:
Tranquilizers, also known as benzodiazepines, can be addictive after
14 days of use.
In Canada, between 1995 and March 1996, 428,000 prescriptions for one particular,
highly addictive tranquilizer were written, with more than 35% of these for
patients 65 and older.
In Australia, a study found one third of elderly people were prescribed tranquilizers
and another found that the elderly were prescribed psychoactive drugs in nursing
homes because they were being �noisy,� �wanting to leave the nursing home� or
were �pacing.�
Data from coroners� reports compiled by Britain�s Home Office showed benzodiazepines
as a more frequently contributing factor to causes of unnatural death each year
than cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and all other illegal drugs.
While nations wage a war on cocaine, heroin and other street drugs, roughly
one in five seniors in the United States struggles with a different kind of
substance abuse� prescribed psychoactive drugs.
In the United States, 65-year-olds receive 360% more shock treatment than 64-year-olds
because at age 65 government insurance coverage for shock typically takes effect.
Such extensive abuse of the elderly is not the result of medical incompetence.
In fact, medical literature clearly cautions against prescribing tranquilizers
to the elderly because of the numerous dangerous side effects. Studies show
ECT shortens the lives of elderly people significantly. Specific figures are
not kept as causes of death are usually listed as heart attacks or other conditions.
The abuse is the result of psychiatry maneuvering itself into an authoritative
position over aged care. From there, psychiatry has broadly perpetrated the
tragic but lucrative hoax that aging is a mental disorder requiring extensive
and expensive psychiatric services.
The end result is that, rather than being cherished and respected, too often
our senior citizens suffer the extreme indignity of having their power of mind
heartlessly nullified by psychiatric treatments or their lives simply brought
to a tragic and premature end.
This publication is being presented to expose the harsh reality that such tragedies
are repeated quietly and frequently in aged-care facilities all over the world.
Such betrayal of the elderly and their loved ones must not be tolerated in a
civilized society.
Sincerely,
Jan Eastgate President, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International
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