“Would you give your mother . . . ”

Later today the Missouri Quality Improvement Organization is providing a webinar for those involved in long-term care. The topic is antipsychotic medication use in the elderly. The phrase that I have used as the title of this post heads one of the slides for this presentation and goes on to list the serious negative side effects of all categories of antipsychotics. It’s scary, really to read all the side effects in one place at one sitting.

A few thoughts come to mind about this. When antipsychotics are used to “treat” “behavioral issues” as a result of dementia, the drugs don’t work! The drugs don’t address the “cause” of the “behavior.” So in addition to not working, the resident living with dementia suffers a myriad of negative side effects, not the least of which includes strokes and as much as a 1.7 fold increased mortality.

My second thought: no, I would not give that to my mother. Who would, really, if one is informed about these issues. This surfaces the importance of being fully informed. Within birth families, when a parent begins to show signs of increased frailty or cognitive disabilities, the adult children are often bewildered. It’s all a new experience; they have little or no knowledge of the aging process or of the avenues of appropriate services that can and should be provided. Often times, there is an admission that when the second parent needed more services, the adult children were more knowledgeable and comfortable in providing them or seeing that they were provided. The adult children have through their previous experiences become informed about appropriate issues: aging process, medications or other treatments, and how to make a decision of informed consent in keeping with the wishes of the parent.

And thirdly, for those of us who live in communities of Religious Institutes, we shouldn’t feel so flustered. Seeing our mentors, our congregational giants, and our friends move along this path, it is not so new to us. With our experience, with our growing knowledge of the intricacies of aging, normal or with more chronic disorders, we should be able – in a very informed way – to companion our Sisters wisely, gently, compassionately and competently.