De-drugging ADD and dementia patients
What do llamas have to do with this story–besides the fact that they’re super cute? (My son snapped a photo of this beauty at the traveling zoo that recently passed through Saxonville in Framingham.) You’ll just have to read on to find out!
May is National Mental Health month. Two big issues our nation faces – both typically on opposite ends of the age spectrum–are dementia, or Alzheimer’s, and ADD, or Attention Deficit Disorder.
For anyone dealing with a child or elderly parent whose emotional behavior is erratic – even scary at times–these disorders can leave people feeling helpless. A common way of treating them is through the use of psychoactive medication. While drugs may mask the condition for a time they don't make it go away.
It’s a shocking fact that Americans consume nearly 80% of the world‘s Ritalin (a drug used to treat ADD in kids). And psychotic drugs are regularly used in nursing homes across the country to deal with aggressive residents. Though according to a recent Boston Globe article, “most of these residents do not have conditions that nursing home regulators say warrant use of the drugs. And federal authorities have warned of sometimes lethal side effects when antipsychotics are taken by elderly dementia patients” (Finding alternatives to potent sedatives).
The Globe article features the example of a nursing home director who works at a home in Littleton, and has taken an entirely different approach to the issue. Try llamas in the living room and a significant downsizing on drug treatments. This new director has slowly weaned the residents off of the drugs and worked to understand the patients' pasts so she could “tailor care to each resident, to make it familiar and comforting." Staff members "learn their preferences, hobbies, and accomplishments, tapping bedrock emotions that endure long after memory fades.”
The Littleton nursing home also uses other animals to bring a calming emotional effect to the atmosphere. While this approach to patient care takes effort and often more staff, which means more money, the positive outcomes prove it's all worthwhile.
In Simplicity Parenting–Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids, authors Kim John Payne, M. Ed. and Lisa M. Ross take issue with over-reliance on pharmaceuticals and the premise that we are simply the result of brain chemistry.
In their study of kids affected by ADD, they looked at neuroplasticity, which indicates the incredible malleability and flexibility of the human brain. "Neurologists studying meditation and prayer are discovering new things about the structure and function of the brain and how it can be changed” (p. 29).
With the ADD cases they treated, they didn't resort to drugs first, but rather introduced a calm, uncluttered environment in the children’s lives. They countered the view "that the brain’s ‘hormonal cocktail’ is entirely predetermined and fixed.” Instead, they said, “The impressive and clinically significant behavioral improvements we saw suggest that a child is affected by more than just the chemical levels in their brain…” (p. 29).
In other words, isn't it possible that thought, or consciousness, precedes and even determines brain activity? “By recognizing neuroplasticity as a real and powerful force, we can wrest ourselves back from genetic and chemical predeterminism, from the notion that we are nothing more than a fixed pattern of genes and neural chemistry” (p. 32).
Both scenarios–treating children with ADD and working with adults who suffer from dementia–strongly indicate that the brain doesn’t have to call all the shots. How vital it is to recognize the power of treating a person as so much more than the limitations of their brain.
I find this Biblical promise rings true: “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (Jer. 29: 11).
In my spiritual practice I’ve seen how applying these same simple guidelines has a healing and transformational effect.
- take time to find out who a person is
- value and establish a calm and fearless atmosphere
- tap into the enduring qualities of love and compassion that we all respond to
Sometimes simple is best.
You can see related photos from The Boston Globe here
Dawn-Marie Cornett
8:40 am on Thursday, May 17, 2012
Wow, this was fascinating! I used to be an educator, and I was horrified by the over use of medication to assist young people in handling their emotions, nerves, and thoughts. It's so encouraging to read about the current change in thought.
Jim Rizoli
6:43 pm on Thursday, May 17, 2012
Boston Globe link interesting...People seem to do very well when they have interaction with animals maybe even better than human interaction.
Things are so out of whack today because everyone wants a quick fix, and giving a pill is the thing they do first.
I'm sure when I was a kid I would of been diagnosed a ADD kid with all the other alphabet letters. Glad I wasn't guinea pig for the pharmaceutical companies.
To be fair, things today are a lot different then I was a kid.
I had a normal healthy family with a stay home mother and working father. That means a lot for kids growing up. Not that way today.
Jim@ccfiile.com
Donald Wendt
6:59 pm on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) are proposing a 13% decrease in anti-psychotics over the next two years. In replace of these medications a combined use of nursing care (as mentioned above), activeties deptment, occupational therapy (for sensory intergration and ADL re-training), physical therapy (for exercise and ambulation) and speech and language is very capable of devising stategies for the demented elderly can all aid in caring for the "problem" patient.
We, as a society, have come a long way sense the times when the "problem" patients were what is called snowed, which is basically a medicated labotomy, and I am happy to see we are taking the next step forward.
Deborah Strafuss
5:15 pm on Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Patients - residents - may not be "snowed" any more Donald, but they are still routinely over-medicated and under-cared for! If you must put your loved one in a nursing facility, don't be snowed by the doctors' professional, elevated role of authority; watch them and listen to them carefully. We had a long road to travel before we learned that our loved one was still communicating with us as clearly as she could - we were the ones not able to hear her.
Ingrid Peschke
10:17 pm on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Sounds like good news, Donald. Anything that moves away from treating people like lumps of matter and instead seeing them as intelligent, capable, respectable individuals with the ability to progress and heal is a step of progress.
Joy Hinman
5:30 pm on Thursday, May 24, 2012
A very helpful comment both for kids and the elderly.
With children on medication, I have seen that their goal will be to get off the medication. They want control of their own selves, and that is a victory -- normal peaceful self-control without pills.
Ingrid Peschke
9:31 pm on Thursday, May 24, 2012
That's great, Joy! They certainly deserve normalcy and peace in their lives.
Deborah Strafuss
5:05 pm on Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Ingrid - you are right on target here. Many holistic practices show the efficacy of the "mind" over the "matter" aspect of our human selves. To simplify us down to a subset of chemical reactions is sheer ignorance. We discover a little piece of the picture, act like we have the whole answer and then wonder why our "solution" kills us. "Mind" in the sentence above being the whole of a person's state of being in complete interaction with all of their internal and external environments and stimuli, and "matter" being that part of the process we can map through biochemical means at this time; it is easy to see there is much more to the picture than drugs. By the way, one of the most powerful drugs we ingest is....our food - everything we eat and drink is the building blocks for our bodies and our brains. Just like building a house, junk and fake materials used in construction result in a poor-quality product produced. Children demonstrate this very quickly. For those amazing people with dementia - there is a whole beautiful person in there. The only thing affected is their ability to express themselves using their brains in the same way as you and I do. Non-verbal communication - acting out in children and combative behavior in adults with dementia, have similar roots. They are true expressions of real impressions by those whose abilities to express themselves are not at our commonly accepted level of operation.... due to age or development. Here's to Steps 1, 2, & 3 as above!!
Ingrid Peschke
8:49 am on Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Deborah, I really appreciate your comments. I agree that it's so important to consider the whole "structure" of one's being. What's it built on? What's the foundation? As you say, a great beginning is to value everything we put in ourselves--from good food to good environments. And what about the thoughts we're putting in every day? My experience has been that if we have a spiritual foundation for our thoughts (that is, one that isn't based on the world's wisdom, which is always changing, but on the divine inspiration we receive in our daily meditation/prayers) then we are depending on something bigger than our human mind--more like one divine Mind (God) which I believe orders and governs our thoughts and gives us the wisdom to make intelligent, conscientious decisions about all aspects of our lives. Thanks for sharing!