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Phony diagnoses hide high rates of drugging at nursing homes

nytimes.com

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

#181

Post by AussieWog93 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #169
AussieWog93 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Phony Diagnoses not just at nursing homes, also in mental facilities. Schools too. My mum spent two decades as a primary schol teacher, and it's an open secret in that industry that Ritalin and other behavioural drugs are, at least in some cases, administered for the benefit of the teacher and other students in the class - not necessarily for the child receiving it.

Wait, where on Earth are teachers free to dose students with “behavioral” drugs?

Officially, they can't prescribe medication, but they can recommend to the parents that a child see a doctor. If the kid is actually a problem child, the outcome for this will often will be drugs.

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

#182

Post by Factorium »

heavyset_go wrote: post #2

Antipsychotics are not something to be handed out like candy. They have serious, sometimes permanent and sometimes fatal, side effects in anyone of any age. The article notes how that class of medication increases mortality in elderly people in particular. The fact that some people were prescribed haloperidol as the first line of treatment instead of a newer, safer antipsychotics also blows my mind. I'm terrified of…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haloperidol

"Haloperidol is relatively inexpensive, being up to 100 fold less expensive than newer antipsychotics"

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

#183

Post by chillwaves »

jgeada wrote: post #167
AussieWog93 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Phony Diagnoses not just at nursing homes, also in mental facilities. Schools too. My mum spent two decades as a primary schol teacher, and it's an open secret in that industry that Ritalin and other behavioural drugs are, at least in some cases, administered for the benefit of the teacher and other students in the class - not necessarily for the child receiving it.

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…

I would say drugging young kids with stimulants that have lifelong dependency implications as a kind of sacrifice for the greater good of the larger class is just morally reprehensible.

Let's keep treatment focused on healing the individual, not drugging them into compliance. We are talking about kids here.

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

#184

Post by vkou »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #65
quetzlbazaar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suicide is offensive to society and many individuals on a deep level, especially of people who do not have a "good reason" (such as a terminal illness). While it may have progressed beyond being a criminal act, it is still taboo enough for alternative and equally good avenues to exist for society to deal with it, in this case, police and physicians empowered by law with the "duty of care" concept. This is of course b…

Step 1) fabricate an SMS Step 2) call police Step 3) enjoy Wow so easy to take down your political enemies huh

Step 1) plant evidence of crime

Step 2) call police

Step 3) enjoy

Do you propose that we do away with police, telephones, or crime, to solve this problem?

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

#185

Post by kbenson »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #151
kbenson wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's an open secret in that industry that Ritalin and other behavioural drugs are administered for the benefit of the teacher and other students in the class - not necessarily for the child receiving it. Not necessarily does not mean never, so be careful of a claim like that, and maybe back it up. I have a daughter, now an adult, which Ritalin and/or Adderall provided real benefit. The only thing in question was ho…

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…

> I did less than a year after starting the "meds." Then I got in trouble for discussing suicide with another student

I'm sorry to hear that. I believe that's why we had mandated psychiatric visits while my daughter was on the medication. We couldn't get refills without meeting with the doctor to discuss how it was going. It definitely sounds like it wasn't working well for you, either because of how the medication expressed itself in your case or your specific school situation, or a combination thereof.

> Maybe we could re-evaluate the school system instead of drugging kids to be more scared and spineless?

While I'm not going to argue that school couldn't do with a bit of change, I'm not sure it's fair to extrapolate what everyone's experience is from what happened to you.

As an example, I remember an incident early in seventh grade there was an incident in gym class when we were being taught the fundamentals of wrestling, where after one match and unfortunate classmate earned himself the nickname 'boner' and the ridicule to go with it, which lasted a few years. This undoubtedly made his life much harder. A number of lessons could be taken away from that situation, but "we should stop teaching wrestling in gym class" is probably not one of the better ones.

Should we stop medicating students? Maybe. That probably depends on quite a lot of factors, most of which I don't know enough about. But I would hope that a better solution where those that the medication helps take it and those that it doesn't or the problems associated with it are enough to make it a bad choice don't is an achievable outcome that we should strive for.

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

#186

Post by chillwaves »

tornato7 wrote: post #93
vgel wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened to a friend of mine. "Friend" of theirs who was angry they didn't have a romantic interest in him called the police claiming they were suicidal. Police came, handcuffed them, verbally abused them, and dragged them to a hospital against their will even though they were clearly fine. They were forced to stay there for ~a day and then had no means to get home, thankfully a friend was able to pick them up a…

Something similar happened to a friend of mine and you can find plenty of stories on the internet - the way suicidal people are treated by the police is actually cruel and I can't imagine it helps anyone who is really feeling suicidal. My buddy got arrested, restrained to a hospital bed against his will, was given a cocktail of drugs, and had to stay there multiple days while getting a 'wellness check' every fifteen…

> I definitely learned never to call the police unless someone is literally getting ready to jump off a building.

This is an important lesson. Do not call the police unless you literally just want them to remove a nuisance and you don't care what happens to the person or how they are dealt with. Even then, police are just a wild card with the potential for life altering outcomes.

My brother called the police once because his then girlfriend was acting really crazy/violent after a night out drinking (not the first time) and they almost arrested HIM.

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

#187

Post by msrenee »

robbiep wrote: post #144
msrenee wrote: post #125

I haven't finished the article yet. I got sidetracked by the claim that Haldol is "a powerful sedative." I understand that journalists are neither doctors nor pharmacists, but if you're reporting on a story about medical ethics, maybe know a little bit about drugs, how they work, and what the words you're using mean in a medical context. Haldol is a typical antipsychotic. If the patient has no symptoms that indicate…

Haloperidol is absolutely a powerful sedative (amongst its other effects). This isn’t a misplaced claim or hyperbole, it is used (and I have used it) to sedate agitated patients in hospitals. I mean, it actually sounds like you don’t really know what you’re talking about. It’s not quite in our ‘take down’ class of drugs (think meth patient in the emergency room) but it sure as hell knocks patients out in IV/IM admini…

Maybe it's an issue of dosage. At the levels you would prescribe outside of the hospital to a patient presenting with symptoms of schizophrenia, it can definitely cause sedation. At higher doses, you could probably say that it is a powerful seditive. It just seems disingenuous in the context of this article - to explain to the layman what the medication is - to call it a powerful sedative. It is an antipsychotic which has sedating effects.

Warfarin is a blood thinner. Warfarin was originally used as rat poison. If a nurse gave it to someone they didn't like to increase their risk of internal bleeding, would it be more accurate for a journalist to say that the nurse administered a blood thinner that was not appropriate or rat poison?

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

#188

Post by vkou »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #96
matheusmoreira wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've read some incredible stories. Locking the doors behind the patient. Using some tiny remark as cause for involuntary institutionalization. It made me think american psychiatry was like american prisons where they get paid per person and are therefore incentivized to stuff as many people in the building as possible.

All the while I can drive 15 min and find thousands of obviously mentally ill people in need of involuntary mental health treatment (the type perhaps not even available at this point in the US) wandering around and the police cannot do anything about it because their only avenue for detaining them is to wait until they catch them committing a crime. And even then they are shortly released onto their own recognizance…

Keep in mind that the involuntary commitment system that was largely dismantled in the 80s was a hotbed of abuse - both of the people committed to it, and of the reasons for which people would get committed to it.

Falling out with your business partner? Want to get rid of your wife, so you can move in with your mistress? Your kid came out gay, or atheist? Dad has money, and you don't want to wait for him to die? Involuntary commitment was a fantastic solution for all of these problems.

If you weren't crazy before you get sent to a mental institution, you almost certainly would be after you involuntarily spent some time in one.

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

#189

Post by treeman79 »

kbenson wrote: post #142
AussieWog93 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Phony Diagnoses not just at nursing homes, also in mental facilities. Schools too. My mum spent two decades as a primary schol teacher, and it's an open secret in that industry that Ritalin and other behavioural drugs are, at least in some cases, administered for the benefit of the teacher and other students in the class - not necessarily for the child receiving it.

> it's an open secret in that industry that Ritalin and other behavioural drugs are administered for the benefit of the teacher and other students in the class - not necessarily for the child receiving it. Not necessarily does not mean never, so be careful of a claim like that, and maybe back it up. I have a daughter, now an adult, which Ritalin and/or Adderall provided real benefit. The only thing in question was ho…

Have 2 daughters on adhd medication.

I held off a long time. But finally relented. Night and day difference. Rolling around on the floor endlessly to top of class.

I haven’t found one my body can tolerate for long. But it was so weird to feel normal and not this horrific agony at trying to stay on task.

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

#190

Post by scollet »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #180
kbenson wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some teachers (maybe even the majority) do make carefully considered decisions In the United States, teachers do not prescribe medications. They may make a recommendation that parents seek the guidance of a doctor, and a qualified medical professional (usually a psychiatrist) will diagnose the child, and the parent may choose to pursue medicating or not. In our case, we had regular checkup appointments with a psych…

>Unless the laws have changed since then in Australia, Ritalin is a controlled substance, according to this, and it's not even guaranteed a general practitioner can prescribe it, and a psychiatrist is preferred.[1] Maybe you misheard, or maybe the teacher misunderstood what their capabilities were? Just like in the US, teachers here can make recommendations for parents to seek medical treatment. Said recommendations…

> Just like in the US, teachers here can make recommendations for parents to seek medical treatment. Said recommendations can include comments like "I suspect your child has ADHD". While nothing is guaranteed, if the parent follows up on it there's a good chance the child will be medicated.

Sounds like the system works then!

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