IMPORTANT FACTS

1. One in five seniors in the United States suffers from abusively prescribed psychoactive drugs.

2. An Australian study 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.�

3. Medical literature clearly cautions against prescribing tranquilizers for the elderly because of the numerous dangerous drug side effects.

4. 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.

CHAPTER ONE Betraying Our Senior Citizens

What is the sense of prescribing a senior citizen a tranquilizer that is more lethal and harder to withdraw from than heroin, one that leads to a 45% increase in the risk of having a car accident within seven days of taking it? Why give them an antidepressant that could increase the risk of their falling by 80%, or could cause them to become agitated or aggressive, or even suicidal?

Common sense and decency dictate that the last thing a fragile, anxious or vulnerable elderly person needs is the additional physical and mental stress associated with heavy, addictive psychiatric drugs. As Dr. Richard Lefroy, formerly of the Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital in Western Australia, warned his colleagues, �[Drugs] can alter older people�s ability to orient themselves and can reduce their reason. As a result people want to put them in institutions.� Lefroy further stated that some medical drugs affect the brain and upset the patient, who is then typically prescribed tranquilizers. Irrationality, belligerence or a �dopey� appearance often result.

Dr. Jerome Avorn, an associate professor of social medicine at Harvard University, bluntly explained: �Drugs do � quiet them down. So does a lead pipe to the head.�

Ninety-seven-year-old Mary Whelan, previously happy at her nursing home, was labeled with �dementia� and locked up in a Florida psychiatric hospital, despite her daughter�s objections. �She was so drugged that she could not keep her head up to eat her dinner. She just wanted to go to sleep. It broke my heart,� her daughter told a local newspaper.

In 2002, Dr. Eleonore Prochazka, a German pharmacist and toxicology expert, warned of the dangers of �using psychiatric drugs and other methods, which can lead to a destruction of the personality�even cause death.� Thomas J. Moore, a senior fellow in health policy at the George Washington University Medical Center, reports that more than 100,000 people die every year in America from the adverse effects of prescription drugs. Moore warns: �In such a poorly managed, inherently dangerous system, consumers must pay far more attention to risks and benefits of the drugs they take. Can they recognize the adverse effects of the drugs they�re taking, especially the subtle ones like fatigue or mild depres- sion? Is this one of the drugs where a small overdose is dangerous?�

However, these are hardly questions and responsibilities that should be shouldered by the elderly. Protection from such risks must be afforded them as an intrinsic part of aged-care systems.
The last thing a fragile, anxious or vulnerable elderly person needs is the additional physical and mental stress associated with heavy, addictive psychiatric drugs.

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