Drugs and bullying: terrible violations found in nursing homes across America

Unlike the CIS countries, in the USA, nursing homes have become firmly established in the daily lives of citizens and have become an integral part of the social welfare sphere. Numerous boarding houses, hotels and homes for the elderly here have become not just social institutions, but a very special branch of business. Large-scale research conducted organization Human Rights Watch. Exterior Independent I received a report in my order and published information about the horrors that are happening in the care homes for the elderly.

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The biggest violation is due to the fact that antipsychotic drugs are given to their patients in nursing homes in the United States to control their behavior. This happens despite the rules that prohibit such institutions from delivering drugs without urgent need, according to a report held Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Although the use of antipsychotic drugs by older people with dementia doubles the risk of death, their use continues. In many cases, institutions manage their wards with drugs without obtaining consent from both the patients themselves and their families or carers.

The use of such medications for the convenience of employees or as a disciplinary measure violates federal regulations and may lead to a violation of international human rights, the HRW report said. However, when proving the guilt of a nursing home, employees are rarely punished.

“People with dementia are often sedated to make life easier for overburdened staff, and the government does little to protect vulnerable patients from such abuse,” said Hannah Flamm, a lawyer at New York University Law at HRW. “Too often staff justify the use of antipsychotic drugs in people with dementia.”

The report says that every week about 179, thousands of people, mostly elderly, suffering from dementia, receive antipsychotic drugs without a proper diagnosis.

The report is based on visits by HRW researchers to more than 100 nursing homes located in six US states and interviews with people living there, their relatives, staff, experts in long-term care and disability, and government officials.

Antipsychotics have been developed for the treatment of psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires manufacturers to label them with a warning, the report says.

While the administration of Barack Obama announced that she plans to tighten the rules for their use, in November 2017 Medicare Center and Medicaid Services (CMS) declared a moratorium on this.

The report cites evidence from an 62-year-old woman who claims she was given Seroquel without her knowledge or consent at an institution in Texas.

“It knocks you off your feet. This is a powerful, powerful drug. I sleep all the time,” she says.

The daughter of an 75-year-old woman who is in a nursing home in Kansas said that when her mother began to give an antipsychotic drug, she became “a zombie” who could sit for hours with her arms folded.

The American Public Health Association represents more 13 000 elderly care homes in the United States.

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