How people talked about strong medicines for dementia and what it means

What is it about?

Strong medicines called antipsychotics are not good for people with dementia but are given to them too often so we wanted to know why. When we talked to 28 people whose job it was to look after people with dementia they used two very different arguments. People used ‘the lesser of two evils’ argument to defend using antipsychotics, thinking they knew what was best for patients. But they didn't have a good understanding of the risks or other ways to manage patients. People used the 'medicines not smarties' argument to blame only others for using these medicines while protecting themselves. Now that we recognise these arguments we can plan how to change people's thinking.

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Why is it important?

Dementia affects lots of people around the world with more than 45 million people experiencing it in some form or another, so it's really important that we understand the best ways of caring for our loved ones and stop the uncritical over-prescription of drugs that may not be suitable for patients. No one had until now looked at how people think about and talk about antipsychotics for dementia. Now that we have done this work, we and others can work with doctors, nurses and others to help them think differently about these medicines and stop them using them so much.

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