Why doctors have to use a chemical cosh

HUNDREDS of care homes are still regularly using antipsychotics — dubbed the ‘chemical cosh’ — to manage difficult dementia patients, a study revealed this week.

This is despite promises made for years by the Government to curb the practice.

It is undeniably a scandal that dementia patients — more than 140,000, it is estimated — are still sedated in this way.

This type of medication is not used to treat the dementia itself; rather, it manages the more disruptive symptoms of the condition.

There are times when this can be of use. People with dementia who become, for example, paranoid or very distressed can get great relief from small doses of antipsychotic drugs.

However, too commonly it is not given with the patients’ best interests at heart, but to make caring for them cheap and easy.

Research has shown that such medicines can double the chance of death, and it is estimated that 1,800 people every year die early because of the drugs. So it is something that needs our urgent attention.

Words, however, are cheap. Action isn’t. Psychiatry beds, specialist nurses and welltrained carers are expensive — but it’s precisely these things that are needed to reduce the use of antipsychotics.

So far, I’ve heard nothing like this as a plan of action.

The fact is, doctors don’t prescribe antipsychotic medication because they want to, they do it because they have to.

What is a doctor to do? To my mind, it would be crueller not to sedate these patients, and so allow them to live in a world that is so confusing and alien. Dementia makes some patients paranoid, angry or violent. Each day can be a living hell for them — and those who care for them.

I have come across several cases where one spouse with dementia stops recognising their husband or wife, and has woken in the night and — fearing the person lying next to them is an intruder — has attacked them.

It’s easy to condemn the prescription of these drugs, but actually the real scandal here is that services for older people — especially in dementia care — have been serially cut, year after year.