Nursing home abuse and neglect are vastly underreported across the United States. However, the National Council on Aging has stated that at least one out of every ten people over the age of 60 has experienced some form of elder abuse. Unfortunately, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are rife with various forms of abuse. This is particularly true when the staff of a nursing home finds a patient’s illness difficult to manage.
Often, elderly residents in nursing homes suffer from dementia or other problems that make it difficult to care for them. When this happens, nursing home staff often use tranquilizers of some form, sometimes in excess. This can include the use of potent psychotropic medications such as Seroquel, Risperdal, and others. Intentional overmedication is usually done so that the patient is easier to control, and this is commonly referred to as chemical restraint.
A recent report in Health Journalism discovered that approximately 20% of nursing home residents, more than 250,000 people, are given potent psychotropic medications on a regular basis.