Nursing Home Residents Regularly Given Unneeded Medication

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Nursing Home Residents Regularly Given Unneeded Medication

It is not uncommon for nursing homes to sedate disruptive residents. The residents get upset because they either don’t want to be in the home, don’t know why they are there, or are just having a hard time coping with getting older. This may cause them to become unmanageable by the employees, who therefore sedate them with antipsychotic drugs. This could become something that happens on a regular basis. Continually giving hard-to-handle residents antipsychotic drugs put them at risk of becoming addicted.

The federal government is taking this issue seriously. The Nursing Home Reform Act does state that residents have the right to be free from chemical restraints. And in 2012, the government began a campaign to try to reduce the use of antipsychotic drugs in nursing homes. But, some homes are not complying, and 300,000 elderly people are being given unneeded drugs.

Taking unneeded medication is never a good thing. Anyone at any age can develop an addiction. The elderly are not excluded from this. They may have an even higher risk of becoming addicted because their bodies cannot process the drugs as easily as a younger body. Giving them this medication regularly is only putting them in danger and it should be stopped.