Posts Tagged ‘Elderly Abuse’

Nursing Home Psychiatric Abuse of the Elderly

Monday, December 13th, 2021

Almost 300,000 nursing home residents are given harmful antipsychotic drugs each week, even though most have no psychosis to justify it. In 2019 only about 2% had qualifying conditions for such drugs.

The FDA only approves antipsychotics for people who have serious mental diagnoses, such as so-called schizophrenia. The danger of these drugs to older adults can be profound. They come with black box warnings from the FDA, saying they can increase the risk of death in older people, especially those with dementia.

“The high rate of antipsychotics use across our nation’s nursing homes shows that many facilities continue to resort to the use of these potentially dangerous drugs as a chemical restraint — in lieu of proper staffing — which has the potential to harm hundreds of thousands of patients.”

The extensive off-label use of antipsychotics in nursing homes was found in one study to be associated with a 50% increased risk of experiencing a serious fall-related bone fracture.

Some evidence suggests that some nursing homes may be falsifying psychosis diagnoses to avoid citations for inappropriate antipsychotic prescriptions. In 2018 in Missouri, data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show there were 108 citations for unnecessary use of antipsychotics in skilled nursing facilities (SNF). This involved 20% of all SNFs in Missouri which received at least one citation; and this had been increasing for at least four years.

“It is reasonable to conclude that the overuse and misuse of antipsychotics is pervasive and continues to occur at unacceptably high rates.”

Such extensive abuse of the elderly is not the result of medical incompetence. 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.

Recommendation

Insist that any nursing home where an elderly person is to be admitted has a policy of respecting the resident’s wishes not to undergo any form of psychiatric treatment, including psychoactive drugs. Sign a “Psychiatric Living Will” to prepare for this and give a copy to the nursing home staff.

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Nursing Homes Abusing Dementia Patients with Antipsychotics

Monday, October 14th, 2019

A Human Rights Watch report found that many nursing homes are sedating their dementia residents by misusing antipsychotic drugs.

Former nursing home administrators admitted doling out drugs without having appropriate diagnoses, securing informed consent or divulging risks.

Having observed this personally for myself in a local St. Louis elder care facility, it is no surprise.

The report estimates that each week more than 179,000 elderly people living in U.S. nursing homes are fraudulently given antipsychotic drugs, without an approved psychiatric diagnosis, to suppress difficult behaviors and ease the load on overwhelmed staff.

This abusive practice benefits drugmakers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, largely at the expense of the U.S. government.

Furthermore, the FDA has not deemed antipsychotic drugs an effective or safe way to treat symptoms associated with dementia. In fact, the FDA cautions that these drugs pose dangers for elderly patients with dementia, even doubling the risk of death.

Missouri’s antipsychotic use rate has remained around 18.5% or higher since 2016, and at 18.6 percent it’s now fifth worst in the nation.

Current research indicates that the fewer nurses available per patient, the more likely antipsychotics are to be improperly prescribed.

The shocking truth is that one in five seniors in the U.S. suffers from abusively prescribed psychoactive drugs. The psychiatric industry gets away with this abuse because they have fraudulently redefined old age as a “mental illness” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11).

Examples of diagnoses that could be age-related

DSM-5: Phase of life problem, Problem related to living in a residential institution, Insufficient social insurance or welfare support, Alzheimer’s disease; and of course the catch-all Unspecified mental disorder

ICD-11: Various categories of Dementia; and in contrast to the DSM, the ICD just names it outright as Old age

A For-Profit Disease

To psychiatrists old age is a “mental disorder,” a for-profit disease for which they have no cure, but for which they will happily supply endless prescriptions of psychoactive drugs or electro-convulsive therapy. In most cases, the elderly are merely suffering from physical problems related to their age; for which psychiatry’s answer is to label them “depressed” or having “dementia.”

Through these fraudulent diagnoses, psychiatrists can involuntarily commit the elderly to a psychiatric facility, take control of their finances, override their wishes regarding their business, property or health care needs, and defraud their health insurance.

If an elderly person in your environment is displaying symptoms of mental trauma or unusual behavior, ensure that they get competent medical care from a non-psychiatric doctor. Insist upon a thorough physical examination to determine whether an underlying, undiagnosed physical problem is causing the condition.

For more information, download and read the CCHR booklet “Elderly Abuse – Cruel Mental Health Programs – Report and recommendations on psychiatry abusing seniors.”

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1 in 4 Elderly Americans Hooked on Xanax

Saturday, February 9th, 2019

One in four older Americans who use prescribed benzodiazepine drugs such as Xanax (generic alprazolam) for sleep issues, anxiety and depression end up becoming addicted, according to a recent study.

The study, published 10 September 2018 in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that for every 10 additional days of prescribed drugs, the patient’s risk for long-term usage nearly doubled over the next year.
[doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.2413]

This abusive assault on the elderly 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.

Long-term benzodiazepine users are more likely to develop anxiety or have sleep problems, the very things the drug was supposed to treat. The FDA recommends reporting adverse psychiatric drug reactions to the MedWatch program. It could be dangerous to immediately cease taking psychiatric drugs because of potential significant withdrawal side effects. No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and assistance of a competent medical doctor.

The exact mechanism of action of benzodiazepines is not known, but they play Russian Roulette with neurotransmitters in the brain.

Daily use of benzodiazepines has always been associated with physical dependence. Addiction can occur after just 14 days of regular use. Withdrawal and addiction to benzodiazepines can be as traumatic as with heroin.

The typical consequences of withdrawal are anxiety, depression, sweating, cramps, nausea, psychotic reactions and seizures. There is also a “rebound effect” where the individual experiences even worse symptoms than they started with as a result of this chemical dependency.

Xanax is particularly obnoxious. After a patient stops taking Xanax, it takes the brain six to eighteen months to recover. Extreme anger, hostile behavior, violence and suicide are potential side effects.

Once they are taking the drug and have side effects they can be diagnosed with a fraudulent mental illness called “Sedative-, hypnotic-, or anxiolytic-induced anxiety disorder” and prescribed additional psychiatric drugs for the side effects. [Anxiolytic just means anti-anxiety drug.]

Then, once they are addicted and try to withdraw from the drug, they can be diagnosed with a fraudulent mental illness called “Sedative, hypnotic, or anxiolytic withdrawal” and prescribed additional psychiatric drugs for the withdrawal symptoms.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior as  “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful.

CCHR recommends that everyone watch the video documentary “Making A Killing – The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging“. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of psychiatric abuse victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore. Watch the video online here.

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The Manufactured Crisis of Prescription Drug Prices

Friday, April 27th, 2018

“Manufactured Crisis – How Devastating Drug Price Increases Are Harming America’s Seniors”

This report was prepared in 2018 by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee Minority Office as requested by Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

It examines the history of rising drug prices between 2012 and 2017 for the twenty brand-name drugs most commonly prescribed for seniors.

Drugs were identified using data from Medicare Part D, and average prices were statistically calculated to come up with annual weighted average wholesale acquisition costs.

Of the twenty drugs in the report, two are used off-label for psychiatric purposes:
§ Lyrica (pregabalin), approved for controlling epileptic seizures and neuropathic pain, is also used off-label as an anti-anxiety drug; it carries a warning that it may cause suicidal thoughts or actions.

§ Synthroid (levothyroxine), a synthetic thyroid hormone approved for hypothyroidism, is also used off-label as an antidepressant, although a specific, causally significant hormonal deficiency has not been identified for depression; it has potential side effects of hair loss, mental and mood changes such as depression, easily broken bones, heart problems, and seizures.

A Lyrica prescription rose in average cost between 2012 and 2017 from $264 to $600 (a 127% increase), while the number of prescriptions rose from 9.1 million to 10.3 million (a 14% increase).

A Synthroid prescription rose in average cost between 2012 and 2017 from $96 to $153 (a 60% increase), while the number of prescriptions dropped from 23.0 million to 18.4 million (a 20% drop).

The report concludes, “Soaring pharmaceutical drug prices remain a critical concern for patients and policymakers alike. Over the last decade, these significant price increases have emerged as a dominant driver of U.S. health care costs.”

Frankly, we do not have a particular bone to pick about the cost of prescription drugs; what does concern us more is the off-label use of medical drugs for fraudulent psychiatric conditions, and the seriousness of their potential side effects. If this concerns you as well, please let Senator McCaskill know your thoughts about this.

We recommend informed consent for any treatment plan. Protect yourself, your family and friends, with full informed consent. Courts have determined that informed consent for people who receive prescriptions for psychotropic (mood-altering) drugs must include the doctor providing information about possible side effects and benefits, ways to treat side effects, and risks of other conditions, as well as information about alternative treatments.

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Psychiatry’s Reign of Terror

Monday, November 13th, 2017

Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), known as the “father of modern psychiatry” and original architect of what became the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), established the basic suppressive fundamentals of the Holocaust. The pattern was: Label someone with a false psychiatric diagnosis; Remove them from society; Put them into special camps or institutions; Destroy them.

Suppress: to put down by force or authority; to squash any attempt at betterment; an antisocial expression of antagonism toward life, living or attempts to do better in life.

Psychiatrists today, all over the world, use and apply the same basic suppressive fundamentals of Kraepelin in the mental health industry. Label someone with a false psychiatric diagnosis; Involuntarily commit them to a psychiatric facility, or put children into foster care, or put the elderly into a nursing home, or enforce psychiatric treatment on those incarcerated in prison; Forcibly give them harmful “treatments” such as psychiatric drugs, electric shock, or brain surgery which either cripples them or kills them.

A recently published article in the journal History of Psychiatry by three psychiatrists chronicles the Nazi’s use of electroshock treatment to eliminate mental patients and other “undesirables” from the population. The authors detail that in 1944 Dr. Emil Gelny, working at psychiatric hospitals in Gugging and Mauer-Öhling, Austria, began systematically killing patients with an ECT machine. Today, ECT is a big money-maker for the psychiatric industry.

The origin of psychiatric false data
In 1879, German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) of Leipzig University provided the ultimate scientific “proof” for eugenics and racism, by arrogantly declaring that as man’s soul could not be measured with scientific instruments, it did not exist.

Kraepelin was a student of Wundt; in 1917 he founded the German Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1924), which became the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry during World War II, and after the War was renamed as the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. This institute’s mission was, and is, to prove that mental disorders are just biological, genetic brain disorders. German psychiatrist Alfred Erich Hoche (1865-1943) in 1920 endorsed exterminating “life unworthy of living.” Swiss psychiatrist Ernst Rüdin (1874-1952) worked under Kraepelin for 18 years, and was instrumental in designing The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring in 1933 (the “sterilization law”) which provided the legal basis for compulsory sterilization, which ultimately led to the euthanasia (killing) of six million Jews during World War II.

There were hundreds of psychiatrists in Germany directing and carrying out the atrocities prior to and during the Holocaust. Dr. Schmuhl said, “In my opinion, you cannot say that there are only a few bad apples within psychiatry who did National Socialism’s groundwork, but it is a problem with the entire profession.”

It wasn’t just during the War that these atrocities were perpetrated. Long before in 1905, psychiatrist Rüdin and eugenicist Alfred Ploetz were among the founders of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, a euphemism for eradicating undesirable traits in the population by removing those “undesirables” with sterilization or murder. Starting in 1934 under the sterilization Law, the number of people who were involuntarily sterilized may be as high as 400,000, with up to 5,000 who died as a consequence. Another 275,000 psychiatric patients were murdered, including an estimated 100,000 who starved to death in German mental hospitals. Starting in 1938 the “child euthanasia” program killed over 5,000 babies and children in 31 “pediatric wards” by the psychiatrists in various psychiatric hospitals.

Then in 1939 the first gas chamber killings began in Fort VII concentration camp in Posen, Poland. In 1940-1941, over 70,000 mental patients were killed by poison gas in six psychiatric centers. From 1942-1945 another 250,000 mental patients in psychiatric hospitals were killed. This was only the beginning of the psychiatric atrocities.

For more information, watch the CCHR Documentary The Age of Fear – Psychiatry’s Reign of Terror, which contains shocking personal testimony and revealing inside footage that tell the true story of psychiatry, whose reliance on brutality and coercion has not changed since the moment it was born in Germany.

The Age of Fear education package is also provided free of charge to historians, professors and human rights activists who give lectures and group instruction, teach school or university classes or run community learning programs.

Previous CCHR STL blogs on this subject
https://www.cchrstl.org/wordpress/2017/06/11/the-racism-of-psychiatry/
https://www.cchrstl.org/wordpress/2017/05/22/racism-how-psychiatry-creates-and-perpetuates-it/
https://www.cchrstl.org/wordpress/2016/12/10/nazis-on-drugs/
https://www.cchrstl.org/wordpress/2016/03/25/holocaust-commemoration-in-london-details-hitlers-use-of-psychiatric-genocide-program/
https://www.cchrstl.org/wordpress/2012/11/10/the-age-of-fear-psychiatrys-reign-of-terror/
https://www.cchrstl.org/wordpress/2017/03/19/washington-university-in-st-louis-shocks-pregnant-women/

References
1. Psychiatrists-the Men Behind Hitler, by Dr. Thomas Röder and etc., Freedom Publishing, 1999.

2. Die Gesellschaft Deutscher Neurologen und Psychiater im Nationalsozialismus (The Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists in National Socialism), by Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Springer, 2015. Professor Schmuhl is a German historian who has published numerous history books, especially the history of euthanasia.

3. G Gazdag, GS Ungvari, and H Czech, “Mass killing under the guise of ECT: the darkest chapter in the history of biological psychiatry,” In History of Psychiatry, Sage Publications, 2017.

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Johnson & Johnson Will Pay $2.2 Billion

Wednesday, November 27th, 2013

Johnson & Johnson Will Pay $2.2 Billion to Settle Charges of Illegally Promoting Antipsychotic Drug

This past month Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in fines to settle accusations that it improperly promoted the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to older adults and children.

It is the third-largest pharmaceutical settlement ever in the U.S. and the largest in a string of cases involving the marketing of antipsychotic drugs. It also reflects a decade-long effort by U.S. authorities to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for illegally marketing drugs to older patients with dementia as well as children, despite the grave health risks of the drugs.

The U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, recently announced that the rate of mass shootings in the U.S. is increasing. Although the information could hardly come as a surprise to most Americans, what is interesting is that the nation’s top cop provided no clues as to what may be causing this severe increase in deadly violent acts.

A beginning point might be to ask if there is a common denominator among the shooters. For instance, at the same time that mass-shootings have increased in the U.S., so has the use of prescription psychiatric drugs.

Psychiatrists prescribe antipsychotic drugs to children in one third of all visits, which is three times higher than during the 1990’s, and nearly 90 percent of those prescriptions written between 2005 and 2009 were prescribed for something other than what the Food and Drug Administration approved them for. Antipsychotics such as the Risperdal improperly promoted by J&J have been described as a chemical lobotomy because of their ability to disable normal brain function.

Click here to read more information about this.

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Nursing Home Abuses

Thursday, July 25th, 2013

Nursing Home Abuses

The June 2013 issue of Consumer Reports magazine had this to say about antipsychotic drugs given to nursing home patients:

“These and related drugs are supposed to be used only for patients with diagnosed psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and not for disciplinary reasons such as quelling agitation in patients with Alzheimer’s dementia. In a large 2010 study, almost 30 percent of nursing-home residents had received an antipsychotic; of them, almost one-third had no identified indication for use. The drugs don’t help dementia and have been linked to other risks, including less functional improvement, longer nursing-home stays, and a greater chance of dying. A review published in March by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that most older adults with dementia can successfully be taken off antipsychotic drugs.”

Nursing-home residents have human rights protected by law. The Consumer Reports article goes on to say that “some nursing homes disregard the law, and often they get away with it. One reason is that residents or their families might be reluctant to make a formal complaint because they fear the staff will retaliate.”

In Missouri the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program provides support and assistance with any problems or complaints regarding residents of nursing homes and residential care facilities. Complaints concerning abuse, neglect and financial exploitation should be reported to the Missouri Division of Senior Services Elder Abuse Hotline, 800-392-0210, email address LTCOmbudsman@health.mo.gov.

In the U.S., 65-year-olds receive 360% more shock treatments that 64-year-olds because at age 65 government Medicare insurance coverage for shock typically takes effect.

Indiscriminate use of psychiatric drugs, electric shock, and violent restraints on the elderly are responsible for much needless suffering.

This 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. For example, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) labels Alzheimer’s Dementia as a mental disorder, even though this is a physical illness and the proper domain of neurologists. Medical experts say that 99% of Alzheimer’s cases do not belong in psychiatric “care.”

In most cases, the elderly are merely suffering from physical problems related to their age, but psychiatry claims that they are manifesting symptoms of dementia which necessitates “treatment” in a nursing home or psychiatric hospital. This is then used to involuntarily commit the elderly to a psychiatric facility, take control of their finances, override their wishes regarding their business, property or health care needs and defraud their health insurance.

If an elderly person in your environment is displaying symptoms of mental trauma or unusual behavior, ensure that he or she gets competent medical care from a non-psychiatric doctor. Insist upon a thorough physical examination to determine whether an underlying undiagnosed physical problem is causing the condition.

Contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know what you think about this. Forward this newsletter to your family, friends and associates and recommend they subscribe.

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Depression drugs causing falls in elderly

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

Depression drugs ‘causing falls’

Elderly people with dementia are more likely to suffer falls if they are given anti-depressants

The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology reports that the risk of injuries from falls was tripled when elderly patients are given SSRI anti-depressants.

“Even at low doses, SSRIs are associated with increased risk of an injurious fall in nursing home residents with dementia. Higher doses increase the risk further with a threefold risk…”

Elderly Abuse is a common psychiatric human rights violation. For more information about the way the psychiatric industry harms the elderly, download and read the free CCHR booklet, “Elderly Abuse — Cruel Mental Health Programs — Report and recommendations on psychiatry abusing seniors.”

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.

In the United States, 65–year–olds receive 360% more shock treatment than 64–vear–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.

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Drug manufacturer Eli Lilly settles $1.4 billion in Zyprexa suit

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Eli Lilly and Company pleads guilty to criminal conduct for pushing lethal psychiatric drug Zyprexa on children and the elderly; pays largest fine in Department of Justice history.

Read the Department of Justice news release here:

https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2009/January/09-civ-038.html

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