The article mentions antipsychotic medications, which are vastly over-used and over-prescribed in eldercare, in any kind of long-term healthcare, in prisons, in juvenile facilities and teenage boot camp facilities (of the type discussed in the recent TrueAnon series), and of course mental hospitals. In each of these situations, the authority can compel the subject to take meds; the patients have no right to refuse. When prescribed in over-dose quantities (which they frequently are), these drugs are basically chemical lobotomies. Regardless of whether or not the patient has any "psychotic" attributes, private equity eldercare places like these meds because they take away any concern about what their patients do during the day, any need for stimulation or human connection or engagement or anything that makes life living. The power to force another person to take a drug shouldn't be so widely distributed in a society.
A friend and I worked on a (sadly never finished) documentary about mental illness and the courts back in 1985 or '86, focusing on a court handling civil commitments and criminal cases involving people who had been brought for mental health evaluations to the hospital where the court was located. We saw a lot of cases where civil rights lawyers were trying to get orders to stop medications like Thorazine and Haldol, especially.
The court was really dedicated to working with patients and people who had been charged with crimes stemming from, or at least in tandem with their illnesses. I think it lasted a few more years after that and then the judge got in trouble for something or other, but I'd left town before then. I wish we could have finished the doc but we just couldn't get releases from enough people.
Anyway, yeah. One of the studies mentioned in the Journalist's Resource piece brought up increases in the prescription of antipsychotics and opioids at nursing homes as indications that patient care was slipping after private equity purchases.
thanks for the plug brother.
Happy to do it.
The article mentions antipsychotic medications, which are vastly over-used and over-prescribed in eldercare, in any kind of long-term healthcare, in prisons, in juvenile facilities and teenage boot camp facilities (of the type discussed in the recent TrueAnon series), and of course mental hospitals. In each of these situations, the authority can compel the subject to take meds; the patients have no right to refuse. When prescribed in over-dose quantities (which they frequently are), these drugs are basically chemical lobotomies. Regardless of whether or not the patient has any "psychotic" attributes, private equity eldercare places like these meds because they take away any concern about what their patients do during the day, any need for stimulation or human connection or engagement or anything that makes life living. The power to force another person to take a drug shouldn't be so widely distributed in a society.
A friend and I worked on a (sadly never finished) documentary about mental illness and the courts back in 1985 or '86, focusing on a court handling civil commitments and criminal cases involving people who had been brought for mental health evaluations to the hospital where the court was located. We saw a lot of cases where civil rights lawyers were trying to get orders to stop medications like Thorazine and Haldol, especially.
The court was really dedicated to working with patients and people who had been charged with crimes stemming from, or at least in tandem with their illnesses. I think it lasted a few more years after that and then the judge got in trouble for something or other, but I'd left town before then. I wish we could have finished the doc but we just couldn't get releases from enough people.
Anyway, yeah. One of the studies mentioned in the Journalist's Resource piece brought up increases in the prescription of antipsychotics and opioids at nursing homes as indications that patient care was slipping after private equity purchases.