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| Letters: The shameful use of sedatives to keep elderly patients quiet As a nurse with 20 years' experience, I am all too familiar with the use of sedatives to reduce the time and effort required for the care of elderly patients (Anti-psychotic drugs kill 1,800 dementia suffers every year, 13 November).I recently lost a dear friend. At 96 years old, she was blind, profoundly deaf, mainly immobile and the proud owner of an agile mind and a uniquely funny and filthy vocabulary developed over many years as a street-market vendor. Admitted for a few days of hospital care for a leg ulcer, she responded to a perceived affront to her dignity with characteristic obstinacy and verbal fire. She was given a sedating anti-psychotic and never sat upright again, dying of a chest infection three days later.The lack of dignity afforded to the elderly in care settings is a continuing disgrace in this country. It is too late for my friend, but it is to be hoped that, now it is recognised that abuse of sedative medication leads to so many unnecessary deaths, there will be a reduction in this shameful practice.Hal SatterthwaiteLondon• My father, a fit and strong man with mild dementia, died in May this year (in Australia) after 16 months of the relentless administration of anti-psychotic drugs. Drugs that took away all his cognitive abilities in just a few days.When I first saw him about three weeks after he had been started on one of these "chemical coshes", he had drug-induced Parkinson's. He was incontinent and shuffling, had slurred speech, and he was already a shadow of his very recent former self. He was at great risk of falling over, and these drugs made him very agitated and confused. These side effects were being ignored and passed off as his condition.Nothing will bring him back but I do hope that this debate about the systematic, unquestioned and indiscriminate use of these drugs does not go away and that future dementia sufferers do not have to face the undignified and hastened end to their lives that he suffered.People with dementia need care, patience and understanding. The last thing they need is a drug that takes away all of what remains of their cognitive abilities. What is often misinterpreted as aggression is, in fact, frustration at not being able to express themselves or at not being heard. Dementia sufferers need a voice, and we as an advanced society need to be that voice.Annie WattsKingston-upon-Thames, SurreyDementiaHealthOlder peopleDrugs policyDrugsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Government off pace in cyber-crime fight The founding director of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre says the pace with which cyber-criminals adapt their techniques to changing technologies has made the Federal Government's cyber security strategy out of date within a month of its release. abc.net.au |
NASA to launch sky-mapping spacecraft LOS ANGELES (AP) -- NASA's latest space telescope will scan the sky in search of never-before-seen asteroids, comets, stars and galaxies, with one of its main tasks to catalog objects posing a danger to Earth. The sky-mapping WISE, or Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to launch no earlier than before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast aboard a Delta 2 rocket.... hosted.ap.org |
Rare New Year's Eve 'blue moon' to ring in 2010 LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don't expect it to be blue - the name has nothing to do with the color of our closest celestial neighbor.... hosted.ap.org |
RSPCA searching for koala killer The RSPCA says it will not give up the search for the person who shot a baby koala north of Brisbane. abc.net.au |