Live data from Hacker News

Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

nytimes.com

331–339 of 339 posts

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#331
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m assuming he was on Medicare, the gold standard insurance in the us?

Yes, but a Medicare Advantage plan through a traditional "insurance" company. I think it got him better drug coverage and a few fringe benefits. I wasn't involved in choosing the plan, I just stayed the course because it was mostly working out. I don't believe that it affected his care. There were a fixed number of hospitals, inpatient rehabs, and visiting nurse associations, and they all took his plan. And I can't p…

In general unless your parents had tons of money you can just be honest with them, the person is 90 years old on a fixed ss income, the likelihood of you getting a single dollar is 0%. Just stop trying. Also great for advocacy in the hospital when they wanna discharge and you feel they still need to stay longer. They’re not allowed to discharge without consent, they’ll claim that you’re on the hook OOP for anything Medicare won’t cover… but if the patient has no money, who cares. The social worker can yell till she’s blue in the face about fiscal responsibility but at the end of the day, the hospital will have to eat the cost and actually perform the rehab correctly. (Speaking from experience)

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#332
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m on Abilify and Vraylar. Makes me feel normal. Love it.

I think the negative and totally inaccurate depiction of psychiatric care on TV and in movies is why people are surprised that antipsychotics actually really help most people who are prescribed them.

Yes. Also, the name "antipsychotics" is of no help either.

The second generation "atypical antipsychotics" are really not much different from antidepressants. They just typically contain an additional dopaminergic effect (e.g. modulation). As someone else pointed out in this thread, Abilify is prescribed for depression and anxiety.

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I picked up my wife yesterday after a 72 hour hold at an in-patient center. I’m so glad that she legally had to be there. She tried to commit suicide Sunday night and spent Monday and Tuesday in the ER. It’s been a horrible week for all of us. The behavioral health place she was at was not perfect, but she would not be where she is right now if it weren’t for her having to be there. For years I have told myself that…

There are times when getting someone on a 72 hour hold has been too difficult. I have been in situations where getting a 72 hour hold was necessary but was not possible. I'm glad it worked out for you. I can see both sides of it. I wish I knew a good solution.

I mean, speaking as someone who was clinically depressed for 25+ years, and about 20 of those years highly violent/homicidal/suicidal, in my opinion, a good solution would be to allow those of us with daily emotional pain and no regard for human life, access to cheap and mediated suicide assistance. Suicide is a human right.

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure it's fair to extrapolate what everyone's experience is from what happened to you. But the problem is generic. USA schools have all the code smells: employees who are “just doing their job Ma’am”, or reacting knee-jerk, politics being involved leading to no solving issues but communicating a lot on them; no-xyz policies (replace with any CNN topic of the time) which leads to extreme response to normal y…

In the US, we were told our son had too much energy and would be medicated when he gets older. We moved to the NL and the teachers say he’s perfectly normal, despite having more energy. She said it would only be an issue if he wasn’t learning; which might indicate an issue with focusing. It turns out, you can still have energy and learn at the same time.

Exactly this. This is one reason we homeschool. Public school in the US was so incredibly oppressive (cops patrolling the halls and writing lewd conduct tickets for kids cussin'???), I was frankly shocked that most kids and parents put up with it.

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#335
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same about my use of an antidepressant.

The tragedy of the articles situation is that someone in a nursing home or assisted living has little or no agency to improve their lives, so the meds seem forced upon them. The common man has the perception of having agency to improve his own situation, so it's not as tragic to have to be on antidepressants.

I probably could have quoted it, but I was referring to "giving them good fulfilling lives is hard and expensive." Absolutely the captive nature of assisted living makes any transgression worse, but I guess underneath my unintentional irony there's a grain of truth in that they aren't trying to give them those lives anyway, they just want them to be easier to manage. In a certain sense it's a maiming.

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, it "worked" by making me far more anxious of failure and the judgement of others. For 8 years. I had never previously had suicidal thoughts but I did less than a year after starting the "meds." Then I got in trouble for discussing suicide with another student. The whole situation is more hellishly dystopian than a grimdark fiction writer could imagine. It's no mystery why gen Z are often aggressive doomer…

Ritalin (methylphenidate) has an effect on one type of serotonin receptors. Most physicians are unaware of this, and, indeed, many think that methylphenidate is an amphetamine derivative, which is not the case. For many people, d-amphetamine or cannabis are better treatments with less side effects.

Ritalin displays no significant activity on 5HT receptors, in contrast to dexamphetamine, which does have significant serotogenic effects.

Yes, they are not related, but both are taken for their dopaminergic effects, though they achieve this by different methods (reuptake inhibitor vs agonist).

Generally, in the course of treatment for ADHD, patients will get to try both to see which one they respond to better. They often exhibit strong preference for one over the other (personally, dex does nothing for me, even at recreational doses of 50mg).

Their risk profiles are very similar, and one cannot be said to have "less side effects", unless referring to a specific individual's response.

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#337
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that child with behavioral issues is sharing a classroom with 10 to 20 other children. It has never been fair to everyone else to put up with the issues on the one. In more brutal prior days, they'd be expelled and become the parent's problem. Now, they get medicated into compliance. It isn't fair to anyone, neither that child nor the others, that they get streamed in with everyone and everyone has to figure…

In more brutal prior days, there was corporal punishment - I was frequently caned and variously otherwise bodily punished as a child, because I was a habitual miscreant - were I a decade younger, I probably would have been drugged. Personally, I’ll take the memories of violence over being medicated for life any day of the week. Oh, and it generally worked - fear of retribution is quite the motivator.

My anecdotal experience was also that corporal punishment worked ... until I grew too old for it.

Having spent my formative years being motivated by avoiding beatings, rather than seeking praise, made it very difficult to adjust to adulthood in a world that relies on positive reinforcement for motivation.

For every "...and I turned out just fine", there are many who didn't. Your "memories of violence" aren't the alternative to "being medicated for life", they're often the very cause of it.

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean with "lifelong dependency implications"? I take such medication and whenever I stop taking it for a time period, all of the side effects of the medication completely vanish. This type of medication is not addictive, actually it's a bit unpleasant, I don't think anyone would get addicted to it. And it's not like people with ADHD are rendered completely useless if they're not on their medication. We gr…

Have you tried researching the long term effects of these medications? There is plenty of scientific literature available. Be sure to consider the age which the treatment starts. A major aspect of concern for all drug use is how it affects developing minds.

The catch is that unmedicated ADHD outcomes aren't good.

I worked with the same group of students for a 2.5 year period of pre-K and kindergarten. Low self esteem, anxiety and depression and to a less extent conduct disorder were plain to see in the majority of the low executive function students by the end of Kindergarten. I saw these negative outcomes develop as a direct consequence of difficulty managing behavior in class and keeping up with peers.

Particularly for kids with combined inattentive hyperactive ADHD symptoms it's nearly impossible for them to get through the day while keeping up academically AND keeping their behavior inside the realm of "acceptable classroom behavior". Lacking a robust support system for students with extra needs (think an additional teacher or teaching assistant in classroom at all times) there is a very finite limit to how much you can assist without creating issues for the progress of the class as a whole.

The reason that I am careful to use low executive function (EF) as the label at this age is that even for experts in this area it's incredibly difficult to predict who will "grow out" of their lower than average EF issues and who plateaus with maturity.

I think the current consensus that diagnosis and especially medication for ADHD is too difficult prior to 6 or 7 is correct. I've seen too many students have seeming miraculous gains in EF and catch up with peers in a matter of weeks to think that preschool is the appropriate time to diagnose and treat ADHD.

The students who continue to lag behind in EF are substantially behind in basic grade level knowledge when they set foot in primary school. The amount of catch up they have to do is substantial even for neurotypical students by time that a formal diagnosis and medication is an option.

Now add in the fact that a large portion of the parents of ADHD kids have a parent with ADHD or less than average EF skills. They are less able than most to give their children the extra out of classroom help they need.

Getting kids on medication ASAP once a diagnosis is confirmed and a well tolerated treatment is found is a no brainer. By the time that this comes into play you are already in educational triage. We're talking about 1st graders that can't read simple consonant vowel consonant words in some cases.

The obvious solution is putting in a low EF safety net in pre-k and kindergarten. Extra teachers in classrooms, extra help with literacy. Making sure all parents are aware that their child is has an elevated risk for ADHD diagnosis later down the road, so they can familiarize themself with the diagnosis and treatment options-- and more importantly so that people are assessing and testing to see if they catch up in EF function.

Re: Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i hear you. unfortunately there are a lot of ppl in a situation where they did not declare that in time and we can't assume they would.

Most doctors don't accept this sort of end of life care. We should stop making it the default and make it elective instead. We treat animals far more humanely, allowing them to be put down when their quality of life goes down without much hope of improvement. Right now, if I want to avoid the nightmare fate of elderly or permanently ill people, I would have to commit suicide ahead of time. I would rather have a human…

fact remains: everyone can opt-out
Post reply on HN