It is clear to anyone who has lived with and cared for someone experiencing dementia or looking after a group of such individuals in a long-term care facility, that the issues of memory and recall are not the ones that play havoc with the individual and their caregivers, but the behavioural challenges. Not everyone with an illness causing dementia develops behavioural issues, often called BPSD (Behavioural and Psychiatric Symptoms of Dementia) but for those in whom this occurs, it might have a critical impact on the life they lead, the care they receive and the potential exposure to treatments that potentially might negatively impact their function, quality of life, place of residence or according to some studies life expectancy.
Studies done in the United States over the past decades and in parallel in Canada have been critical of the apparent ease and frequency with which residents of long term care experiencing BPSD are exposed to classes of medications called neuroleptics, which more recently have been subdivided in the older typical and the newer atypical neuroleptics or antipsychotics. It is always important to remember that these classes of medications were initially developed to address psychotic experiences and behaviours of those experiencing schizoaffective disorders in which delusions and hallucinations may be paralyzing to the individual and their introduction into care during the past decades, in series with the typicals preceding the atypicals; it has allowed the virtual emptying of the previous chronic psychiatric hospitals and has allowed many individuals living with such illnesses to manage in community dwellings with many normal aspects of life including educational and work experiences and abilities. In parallel, for many previously fractured families who have been able to re-incorporate family members with unmanageable and disruptive psychotic symptoms back into a family structure.
Almost as an after-thought, the use of these medications in older individuals who were experiencing symptoms similar to those of younger people with clear mental health, schizophrenic-type syndromes. These individuals were found to benefit from these medications in terms of the BPSD which often had some of the similar characteristics, at least on the surface of delusions and hallucinations which often affected their ability to live in community settings at sometimes forced those in some congregate community dwellings to be discharged because of what was interpreted as disruptive behaviour. With the apparent increased exposure to such medications, many of the products obtained negative reputations as did the long-term care facilities that seemed to use them excessively. With some initial studies it appeared that first the atypical medications appeared to be associated with excessive mortality profiles, mostly due to cardiologic disorders and then on closer scrutiny the typicals appeared to have the same negative side-effect profile. (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa052827)
This has resulted in policies in both the United States (Federal Nursing Home Reform Act (OBRA'87) Law & Legal Definition- http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/20/6/128.full) and in Canada to decrease the use of such medications in long-term care facilities, with either very complex administrative procedures to be able to use the medications in the first place and fairly substantial bureaucratic steps to continue their use. There are mechanisms in Canada whereby the volume of such medications used are scrutinized and the governmental administrative bodies that monitor such use may criticize or even penalize the organization where excessive use is deemed to be occurring.
It was therefore quite an eye-opener to read the article, "The Long-term Effects of Conventional and Atypical Antipsychotics in Patients with Probable Alzheimer's disease" published in American Journal of Psychiatry September 2013 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23896958). In the article the authors followed a cohort of 957 patients with dementia to time of nursing home admission or to death. Of the cohort about 25% were provided with either a typical or atypical antipsychotic. After adjusting for all the variables, it was concluded that it was not the medications that was responsible of increased nursing home admission or apparent increase incidence of death, but rather the underlying degree of psychosis and agitation experienced by these patients. If this is the case, it might result in a change in the way we address individuals with these symptoms.
No one, based on this study would re-introduce antipsychotics in an excessive cavalier fashion, but on the other hand the excessive fear held by physicians and families might be quelled somewhat with a proper balance of indications, dosing and the attempts at withdrawal after defined periods so that those who might truly benefit from these medications will receive them as required rather than using alternatives which may have their own inherent dangers and contra-indications. There are studies that demonstrate some potential benefit for some residents of long-term care for whom withdrawal is possible. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23543555).
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