Symptoms Of Depression In Elderly

Q: AN ALARMING 400,000 Australians aged 70 or over were prescribed at least one drug in 2005 that is considered potentially harmful to the elderly - and for which there is a safer alternative, a major study has revealed. The drugs most often implicated are long-acting benzodiazepines, tranquillisers used to treat sleeplessness and anxiety. Specialists warn that these can increase confusion and drowsiness, leading to falls and broken bones..Contd

A:Oh well if those people are sucked into believing they need those prescriptions and believe everything their doctors tell them, well........it's their choice. Probably if you tried to tell them otherwise your advice would not be well received anyway, so why concern yourself ? When the Government brings Doctors here straight from Iranian Alquada training camps and rest homes their riddled with New Zealand gang Alquada related nursing staff, expecting deathly high doses and conflicting acknowledged prescriptions that turn a fatal combination. They're the courses par here innocent Tilly. The hospitals have changed the emphasis from loves cajoling to cut up, drug up, then clear the bed space And to be fair, this study was a study of scripts written for retired servicemen. They found 21% of prescriptions written to a group were 'potentially' harmful to the elderly. They then extrapolated these numbers to the entire population hence the 400,000 number. There was no study of what the medications were prescribed

for, nor whether it was the most appropriate drug for the purpose I would contend that most drugs have potentially harmful side effects in the elderly - but sometimes you have to use them. If they were given prescriptions for more harmful drugs when less harmful drugs (or other treatment) were available, then questions should be asked. Old people often don't ask the questions themselves. I'm not a scientologist, but I also get the feeling that anti-depressants and tranquillisers are handed out to old people almost as a matter of course following trauma (ie death of friends and family), based on the assumption that sadness is not a natural and normal emotion.