Under the cosh

Stories of care homes using a ‘chemical cosh’ of strong drugs to effectively turn dementia sufferers effectively into zombies – the dead living, if you will – are back in the news.

While this story has come to national prominence several times before – including a Panorama programme late last year – it is important that it is revisited; the unnecessary drugging of residents - in this case with antipsychotic drugs - is something that should be clamped down upon.

While the numbers of Alzheimer’s sufferers kept sedated with antipsychotic drugs vary - up to 100,000, depending on where you read – it is still a significant proportion of sufferers in the UK.

Worse still, the Alzheimer’s Research Trust has found that putting Alzheimer’s sufferers on these drugs does not do most of them any good – and shortens their life in some cases. But when you consider these drugs were designed to treat schizophrenia that is perhaps unsurprising.

If, as some claim, dementia patients are drugged mostly to make life for care home staff easier, this needs to be addressed because it is an abuse of the sufferer’s dignity.

A potential solution is for care home staff to receive compulsory and better training in dementia. Currently, training is optional and can comprise a course lasting for less than a day – barely time to skim the surface of such a complex condition.

If all care home staff were sent on specialist courses, lasting at least a few days, it could make a big difference to their understanding of the condition and help them to deal with sufferers in a more positive way and improve their quality of life.

But whether this happens is another matter. Many care home managers will claim they do not have the budget for costly training courses and with the economy slowing it is unlikely there will be any government grants.