The NY Times has an article up today about how the use of antipsychotics is not proven to reduce irritability and aggressive and violent behavior in people with developmental disabilities and the elderly, as it has been widely, and off-label, prescribed. The study blows up the assumption that these drugs help, at all, not to mention their addition of troublesome side effects such as weight gain, diabetes, tardive dyskenesia. The drugs used in the study were Risperdal and Haldol, but the study concludes that the entire class of anti-psychotics can be brought to the same conclusions.
But the routine prescription of the drugs for aggression, they concluded, “should no longer be regarded as a satisfactory form of care.”
How could so many people get this so horribly wrong? Greed? Why were such studies not conducted before this? Before the Zyprexa lawsuits and my own son's 50 pound weight gain and absolutely no reduction in troublesome behavior? It kind of makes me sick.
6 comments:
I am sickened, too.
I agree. That's horrifying!
Well, I am not well versed in this particular topic, but I love your blog!
Hey, I found Detriot PBS up here, so I'm going to catch Frontline tonight. I hope.
that is horrible. i think they drug companies need to be more responsible. you would think after the whole joint drug thing, they would be more into that. we should really try to bring them down. so far they've not done anything helpful for anyone i know.
Off topic, but not, there was an article in the nyt talking about fibromyalgia and the first drug martketed specifically for it. they don't know why it works, people have some bad side effects, but it makes things a little better. i think we need to really look at how many drugs are being shoved at us. and how it is ultimately not in our best interests.
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