Just to be clear, in case this wasn’t obvious, these residents we’re talking about don’t actually have schizophrenia — a fact easily deduced by looking at their health records. Schizophrenia is almost always diagnosed before the age of 40. You don’t just wake up in your 60s one day and think you’re the reincarnation of Alien Charlie Chaplin or whatever. The reasons these old people are being misdiagnosed seem to be twofold: 1) It makes them less of a nuisance for the chronically understaffed nurses because the drugs basically zombify them, and 2) it helps keep these homes’ government ratings up. See, high use of antipsychotic drugs is pretty bad for a nursing home’s rating … unless it’s being used to treat schizophrenia. Ding, fork, ding.
On top of that, the number of patients on antipsychotic drugs for schizophrenia are legally kept off public records. The argument goes that these drugs were approved to treat schizophrenia, so nursing homes shouldn’t be penalized for administering them to people diagnosed with the disorder.
And while schizophrenia diagnoses have been soaring, behaviors associated with the illness like delusions and hallucinations have slightly declined. If the alarm bells aren’t ringing in your head by now, maybe read that again because that’s like saying pneumonia cases have increased, but people are coughing less. Of course, with the pandemic and staffing problems taking a hit because of it, the antipsychotic drug trend has only increased. The numbers are shocking: One in nine nursing home residents across the country has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. In the general population, one in 150 people suffer from schizophrenia.