It’s not just in America: Norwegian nursing homes are also over-medicating their senior citizens

‘It’s hard not to feel the overwhelming urge to take the best care of yourself possible when you hear what happens to elderly people in nursing homes. While horror stories involving specific incidents of mistreatment hit the headlines every now and then and can be extremely disturbing, a much more insidious problem is doing even more harm to nursing home residents: overmedication.
The latest study out of Norway shows just how extensive this problem is. When researchers studied the medical records of around 1,000 Norwegian nursing home residents over the course of six years and interviewed their relatives using questionnaires, they found that medication use for mental illness was remarkably high whether residents had dementia or not.
Patients who showed symptoms like hallucinations, aggressive behavior, and irritability were more likely to be given psychotropic drugs. In addition, they noted that many patients continued to take these medications even after their symptoms improved, placing them at a higher risk of falls, strokes, and even early death.’
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